Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 125, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 June 1918 — TWO Y. M. C. A. SECRETARIES KILLED [ARTICLE]

TWO Y. M. C. A. SECRETARIES KILLED

New York, June 4. —One hundred huts destroyed, two secretaries killed and two others badly gassed is the toll which the Y. M. C. A. has paid to date in the present German offensive. Halliday Smith, of Nyack, N. Y., and Hadley Cooper, of Piedmont, N. Y., were victims of the intensive bombardment by poisoned gas shells which proceeded the Hun drive toward the Marne. They were overcome while serving the exhausted allied troops and died a few hours afterward in the hospital. More than fifty Y. M. C. A. workers stationed on the French front carried supplies to the poilus during the hottest part of the desperate battle and many of these received minor wounds. The British soldiers destroyed their huts to prevent them from falling into German hands. The stores of food and other supplies which were lost in the destruction of all “Y” huts in the path of the advancing Huns reached an estimated value of more than $500,000. One “Y” hut standing in an advanced portion of the battle line just outside the zone where the enemy made his greatest gains, was destroyed six times by shell fire but each time was hastily repaired in order that the relief work might continue. The two secretaries killed were stationed in this hut.