Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 259, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 November 1918 — Perfect Red Cross Star on Yank’s Back [ARTICLE]

Perfect Red Cross Star on Yank’s Back

Odd Mark Made by Two Pieces of Shrapnel From “Whizz Bang.” ■ SERGEANT REFUSES TO DIE ' Put on Liquid Diet Because of Dangerous Wound, He, Steals Food Front "Joy Cart” —His Good Cheer Keeps Patients in Best of Humor. Paris.—All life long Private Jean Fournan of New York city will carry a cross on his back as a souvenir of the great war. The wound that has marked him is so unusual that he is known at American Military Hospital No. 1, where he is now convalescing, as the “Red Cross Man," and doctors, nurses and patients have watched his case with unusual interest. , Fournan is a member of one of the American regiments recently engaged in the fighting near Soissons and Fismes. He has been in France since last October and went through “several kinds of hell” on several fronts without a scratch. And then, one morning a short time ago, just as his company went over the top headed for a Boche machine gun nest, a “whizz bang” knocked him out. He had a momentary stinging sensation and then awoke to find himself on an American sanitary train, from which he was taken by ambulance to the hospital. When he was carried to the operating room the surgeon looked him over and then called the other doctors to come and look. The boy had been hit by two pieces of shrapnel, one of which had gone do.wn his back so close to his spine that only a miracle saved him from paralysis. The other had crossed at right angles, leaving the mark of a perfect cross on his back. Fournan has those pieces of shrapnel in his Red Cross treasure bag. He says they’re “lucky pieces” because they “only left a scar.” Thoroughly Americanized. When Private Fournan is well enough to he discharged from the hospital he means to spend several days in the south of France, where he was born. But after the war is over he is going back to New York city to his adopted country, where he has lived for 15 years. He is so thoroughly Americanized that he prefers fighting with American troops, with whom he trained at Camp Syracuse. Just by chance the American in the next bed to Fournan is of German parentage. “Frank Heill, Columbus, 0.,” reads the card at the head of his bed,, and the corporal admits that his name is as German as It sounds. An uncle who lives in Texas was so pro-German that he disowned Heill when he enlisted for service. Heill felt that he had to live down his name, and so it was that he earned his corporal’s chevrons shortly after he had gone into training. He wears two service stripes now, and he boasts that it took three machine gun bullets to knock him out the day he was wounded. He was fighting near Soissons when he “got his.” His company had been entrenched on a hill slope that overlooked a valley of wheat fields beyond which the Germans were hiding in the woods of another slope. Heill and his men had managed to cross the valley -by running short distances at top speed and then dropping for a breathing space into the wheat. Just a£ he started up the slope two bullets hit him, one in the thigh, the other below the knee of his left leg, and as he fell a third struck the big muscle in his right forearm, so completely paralyzing It that he bad to jerk his rifle loose with his left hand. Interested in “Eats.” Heill remembers rolling over into a shell hole, where he lay for hours be-

fore a patrol of Boche prisoners, guarded by an American sergeant, came by and found him lying there. He was carried into a field hospital and later sent into Hospital No. 1. The leg wounds are healing rapidly, but the right forearm is still partially paralyzed. “But what’s an arm as long as I'm getting plenty to eat,” says Corporal Heill. “There were three days during the fighting up at the front when I missed out on rations, and another 24 hours that I was lying out on the field. Guess I never will get enough to make up for missing all those meals. But they do sure treat us fine here. Plenty of,good food, a good looking nurse and a Red Cross chaplain that comes around every day with cigarettes.” “All right son you to talk,”, grumbles Webb La Pointe of Sheboygan, Wis„ from another bed, “but what do you think about me? Laid up here like an invalid and I’ve never gotten a crack at a Boche.” La Pointe is in a machine gun company of one of the divisions that distinguished itself in the fighting near Compeigne. He had just started over the top early one morning carrying the tripod of a gun when a “soup wagon” came along and knocked him down. He was hit in the knee and elbow and now he is in the hospital grumbling, not because" he is done up in yards of bandages and painful apparatus that holds his injured leg straight, but because it will be some time before he gets back front again for a “crack at a Boche.” David Rittow of New York city is another convalescent of No. 1 who enjoys the food and the Red Cross cigarettes. He had several days on tinned rations when he was brought in from the field and was losing his strength because he refused to eat. In the bed next him was a sergeant of the regular army who had been brought in to die because a piece of shrapnel had lodged so close beneath his heart that an operation to remove it was impossible. „ Steals Food From “Joy Cart.” The sergeant, rejoicing in the name of Kelly and coming from the town of St. Joseph, Mich., refused to accept the verdict that he must die and dine on liquid rations. Whenever the “joy wagon” . (as the boys call the food

cart) appeared, the ■ sergeant wouF arise from his “death bed” and stea food while the backs of the nurseswere turned. After a- while the doctors listened to his urgent request for “regular meals,” and cancelled the order that he was to have liquid diet pending his stay in the hospital. Sergeant Kelly is still at the hospital, where he is now working as a hospital orderly. He is eating as much as they will give him and whenever possible sneaking “extras,” which he hides beneath his pillow.. Rittow and -the other men in ward 238 have developed real appetites from watching him eat and listening to his jokes. They know as well as does the sergeant that any chance accident may dislodge the bit of shrap nel that lies beneath his heart, but as long as he can shake his fist at death and laugh at his troubles, t|ey laugh with him. He spins yarns hou’of his experiences in the Philippines, On the Mexican border and in France, where he has served 12 months now. And when he runs out of breath, Rittow catches the ball and tells his story of service as “liaison” messenger between French and American troops who took Fere-en-Tardenois. Took Wrong Turn.

He trained at Camp Mills with another group of men from New York city, coming to France last October. His company was sent to several different fronts in France, and by odd coincidence every time that they were relieved the company which replaced them suffered heavy casualties from attacks, raids or bombardments. Finally came the day when they were recalled from the Champagne front and sent in to support the division that had pressed on beyond Chateau Thierry in the early days of the July offensive. The day he was wounded he had gone back and forth for 12 hours between French and American field headquarters, carrying important messages. He had just started off on another trip when a chance turn to the right Instead of to the left, as he had been going, put him in the path of flying shrapnel that wounded him in the left thigh and below the knee. “Oh, the leg’s all right,” he sings out cheerfully. “But I sure would have been gone if it hadn’t been for the sergeant there. I couldn’t make myself eat when they brought me here —nerves, the doctor said. Then I used to watch the sergeant sneaking out of bed when he was supposed to be dying and swiping food from the joy cart. It tickled me'so to watch him that I began to get hungry—and now I’m getting fat.”