Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 232, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 October 1918 — DEATHNEAR, BUT HE IS NOT AFRAID [ARTICLE]

DEATHNEAR, BUT HE IS NOT AFRAID

Yank Lieutenant Feels Huns Will Get Him, but Will Take Few Along. . PROUDEST MAN IN UNIFORM Win* Promotion From Corporal to Platoon Leader .for Daring Piece » of Work on Night Patrol Duty. Paris.—lt was on the boulevard. The Opera. The Opera was but a scant half block away. And it was dark, both the Opera and the boulevard. The only light came from the kiosks advertising Paris newspapers, patent bouillon and talcum powder. There I heard the typical story of the American second lieutenant, the platoon leader who’s doing a wonderful bit in winning the war. Call him Prettyman, which isn’t his name. He was a deputy superintendent of banks before the war. As he said himself, he’d never been out in his life after one in the morning except in a taxicab. He used to earn $6,000 a- year, have his bath every morning and a cocktail before dinner. He is a typical successful young New Yorker. “Gosh,” he said, “I’m the proudest man in this army. I’ve got two kinds of itches at the same time. “We came over on the Justicia, the .one that was torpedoed the other day," he said. “And they spewed us out at an English port at eleven o’clock one night, and at eleven the next night we were back of the lines in Flanders. I was only a corporal then. Then we were moved to Alsace and there we got our first taste of war. Incidentally, there I got to be a platoon leader. On Night Patrol. “Here’s what it was. Up in the first line the Heinies were just about fifty yards away. One night the order came for a patrol. Now, it’s hard to tell you about a patrol standing here in the boulevard. Out there it’s as black as the inside of your shoe. It’s into that that a patrol is supposed to go. And we went. Sure I was scared. Scared green. I didn’t know where I was, and I had the lives of 60 men in the hollow of my hand. But we went. We laid for 14 hours right up against the German wire and we located every machine gun they had, and every man jack of us got back to our own lines safely. “My Godl.it was different from New York. It was a lot different from Paris. It was hell. But when the Heinies came over the next day we knew where they were coming from. And we sloshed them. “That country is full of spies and our wires from the front line back were cut. So I went back myself. They’d laid down the best box barrage I have ever seen. Oh, I got through it, because I was lucky, I suppose. I got through it three times that night, in fact. And me, never out after one o’clock in my life before except in a taxicab. Say, it was fierce. Right out in the open country. All I had to tell me where I was were the telephone wires. And they were cut. I was almost sick to my stomach when I hit the break in that friendly little black wire I’d kept running through my hand. But we did get word through. And all the Germans got by way of prisoners were 17 cripples that had been sent up to the front line by mistake. “And, say, I feel they’re going to get me. I’ve got my second lieutenancy and I’m going back up to the front in a few days, as soon as this celebration Is over. And I have a hunch that J won’t come back. . “I’ve got a little sister and a dear father that I’d like to go back to, but there’s something bigger than that.

I’m wearing the uniform, I am. It don’t make a bit of difference if I die, because there are four, five, as many millions as you want more. Only when I do die Pm going to take at least five Heinies with me. And Fm going to handle the sixty or seventy or the hundred and twenty men under me so they’ll do the same. < Allies Are Fine Soldiers. “Sure, I get awful impatient with the French sometimes because they don’t understand our language. And the British sometimes rub me the wrong way. Fve had fist fights with ’em both—before I got to be an officer. But they’re all in the same game and you can tell the folks back home that they’re damned good soldiers, those British and French, every one of them. 'Only we’re going to go them one better —particularly the —platoon of the company of the —th. You’ll hear from us. Only if you’re dropping a line to the folks T know

just tell them that you saw me—in Parts celebrating, and on the way to the front, wherd I don’t expect ever to come back from. Good-by, old man; good luck!” And he strode across the street and disappeared. His job ahead of him to do, full knowledge of the cost of that job, and proud to pay the price demanded —even to the ultimate. He’s the platoon leader, the U? S. A. platdbn leader, that’s going to win this war.