Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 265, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 November 1918 — Page 2
STORIES OF BRAVERY DISPLAYED BY OUR FIGHTING IRISH-AMERICANS
Boys of Ninth Massachusetts and Fighting Sixty-ninth of New York Die Fighting With Smiles on Their Ups, but Huns “Pay”— Yank, Taken Prisoner by Three Huns, Drops Grenade and Kills Captors and Self.
Paris.—“ Will the Irish fight? 7 ’ The same old answer may be made. They will. It can be made on the records of two famous Irish-Amerlcun regiments in France. It is a record that makes men of Irish blood hold their heads high; It is a record that betters the brightest page of America's most glorious military annals. These two regiments (one used to be the old Ninth Massachusetts and the -other the Fighting Sixty-ninth of New York) were in every bad scrap the American army has been in. The tales of their prowess are just now’ filtering back to Paris. They may be told because the censor at headquarters has now ruled that regiments ippy be named for , their part in such fighting as preceded that on the River Vcblc The Ninth and the Sixty-ninth were In almost all of it. The story does not come from official reports. It comes from the lips of two men, one a doctor in the Ninth and the other a chaplain in the Sixty-ninth, who saw what they relate. These two have seen many soldiers die. They know what ibravery and courage and cheerfulness are. Lieut Simon Kelleher of the Ninth
•was In Paris the other day. He tells (the story of his boys. And most of the time he Is either laughing, or tears Involuntarily creep out the corners of his eyes and drop unashamed down his browned cheeks. Lieutenant Kelleher’s stories show that the Irish boys of his regiment, the boys of Boston, South Boston, Roxbury, Cambridge and Charlestown, fought with the cool courage that held the fire on Bunker Hill until those Americans of an earlier day “saw the whites of their eyes.” They show that these boys—and-most of them were mere beys-'died face to the front, a grim smile on their lips, fighting, doing their soldiers' duty to the last breath of ebbing life. Each heartbeat of the all-too-few left throbbed but to one purpose—to fight. No man of the Ninth died, says Lieutenant Kelleher, without taking toll and more of enemy lives with him. One for Each Shot. “Just now the names of these heroes may not be mentioned. But “Kelly and Burke and Shea” are there, all of them, and many more. Lieutenant Kelleher says nothing of his own gallantry. But his stories show that he. too, served. He was not called on for the supreme sacrifice. But he offered his life a thousand times on first aid dressing expeditions to the farthest outposts and beyond. *Td been told there was a wounded man in an advanced traverse,” he says. “I crawled slowly up to get him. I heard . his labored breathing in tne lulls of the gunfire. And then I rounded the corner of the trench. There he sat, propped against the wall. His breath came in tearing gasps and with' each one the blood gushed from hiss chest; for he had been shot through the lungs. He was a boy I had known all my life. “‘They got you bad. Pack,’ I sail* as I tried to help him. “They sure did, Sime,’ he replied. •But looka there.’ “I followed the wave of the empty pistol he still held in his hand, and there stretched across the opposite parapet were six dead Germans, one for every shot in his gun. They had got him only when the gun had emptied. I stopped the bleeding as best I could and we got him back to an ambulance. But he died four hpurs later. I guess his life was well paid for. Tt wav this same sharp raid of the Germans that produced one of the coolest bi*£ of desperate courage I ever saw. One of our boys had been captured by three Germans and he was being led off as they retreated, one on either side of him and one
AUSTRIAN PLANE SHOT DOWN IN ITALY
a, giant crane is raising an Austrian plane brought down utter a stirring Pa* tie with Italian bird men. The pilot is now a prisoner of war in Italy.
behind. Suddenly one of our shells lit within a few yards of the party. The three Germans ducked. at first our boy had. But/no, he hat! reached into his hip pocket. He dropped a hand gfenade directly at his own feet and those of his captors —and the throe Germans were killed. “I got there quickly afterward to where he lay. He smiled up at me. Yes. he smiled, though his. arm and half his side had been blown off. ' “ *God t boy.’ I said, horrified, ‘why did you do that?* “ ‘Saw me get ’em, did you, Doc?’ he answered. “‘Yes, but—’ l didn’t know what to say as-I tried to dress that frightful wound. Gave Life to Get Three. “‘Well, doctor,’ he said gravely. Td been to commufiion this morning and I guess T was ready to die. But I wnsn’t ready to go to Germany. They searched me for grenades when they got me, the three of them, aud they took those out of my bag and out of my side pocket. But I always carry one tucked into my pants when I go out here, just in case of —well, anything like this. And when those three Germans ducked it came through my mind a lot quicker than I can tell It that three dead Germans and one dead American was a lot more on our side of the score than three live Germans and an American as good as dead in Berlin. f So I let her go.’ “He tried to raise his head and look around. “ 'Never mind, boy, you got them all,’ I assured him. t “ ‘Any—any chance for me, doc ?’ he said. “I didn’t answer and he knew. His remaining hand crept. beneath his blood-soaked tunic, gripped something tight and stayed there. After a moment he spoke again. “‘Doc,’ he said, ‘you know all the boys around our square. I wish they could know I was game. “‘And, doc,’ his voice was weaker, ‘will you—will you tell my mother I had —I had this when —I went.’ “Slowly his hand came out; slowly it opened; that boy’s hand strangely old and worn with the bloodstains and grime. Slowly it opened and there in the blackened palm glistened a tiny, bright silver Crucifix. He was dead.”
Won’t Stop Fighting. It’s Chaplain Hanley who tells the story of the Sixty-ninth. They refer to the chaplain as holding the clerical record for mileage in No Man’s land. They can’t keep him off patrols. Chaplain Hanley knows the story of most of the casualties of the Sixty-ninth. He substantiates the statement that not a man has been killed or wounded by a German bayonet, notwithstanding the regiment has encountered in pitched and open battle three of the five divisions of the Prussian Guard at one time and another of its career. Needless to say, the Prussiau Guard division can make no such boast. Father Hanley says the hardest time they have with casualties in the Sixty-ninth is to make them stop fighting when they’re hit. He is himself just recovering from a wounded leg. > “The officers are as bad as the men,” he declares. ‘The day I got this wound I was working up with Captain Hurley’s company. They’d been driven back a little by a vicious German barrage and they were on a little ridge. They’d got orders to hold it, and they did, for four days/ When they left it they went ahead. “Weir, I was up there this day and I heard of a wounded man ahead and a little to one side, just over the edge of the hill toward the German lines. I told the captain I’d better go to him find he wanted to detail a couple of men to help me. I declined and started off by myself, crawling on my stomach underneath a stream of machine-
. v ....■ ' ..... ■ V T’’ ■ / ' .. THE EVENING REPUBLICAN, RENSSELAER, Kfl>.
SINGS TO BOYS IN CAMP
“Our soldiers think the only real queen on earth is the American girl,’* declares Miss Theresa A. Smith, who has just returned from ti tour of singing to the soldiers in camp for the Y. M. C. A. Miss Smith’s home is in Brooklyn, and she is known among the concertgoers as “The Danish Nightingale,” and she has sung her way into the hearts of the boys in the cafaps.
gun bullets that would ■ have clipped me had I raised on my elbow. “I’d gone perhaps 50 yards when I heard a rustle in the grass behind me, and there were two of Hurlew’s boys. They said the captain had sept them to carry me back if anything happened. Now listen to the rest of it. I sent them chasing back to their company and crawled ahead. Just as I got to this ridge the bullet got me. My wounded man was across an open space and I knew’ I couldn’t get to him. I was afraid if I waited till dark I’d bleed to death, so I put a tourniquet ou my leg and started back.
Forgot About Wound. “Now all of this Is just preliminary. They got me back to a hospital a day later and I’d hardly got settled in my cot when who should they put down in the cot next to me but Captain Hurley himself. He was badly smashed up in the leg, too. The leg had been dressed at the dressing station and when they got him settled they started to take off his clothes. As they pulled at his shirt he let out a howl. “The shirt was stuck to his chest with blood* He had a wound there that the doctors at the dressing station had never discovered. “ ‘Why, captain,’ said the doctor, looking puzzled at the casualty tag. it doesn’t say anything about the chest. When did you get this one?’ “‘What day is this?’ asked the, cap tain. “ ‘Wednesday,’ said a nurse. “ ‘Now, let’s see,’ said the captain. ‘Chaplain, you were up there yesterday. I must have got this on Monday.’ “All the time he’d been sending men out to take care of me he’d had that hole in his own chest and the shirt frozen over his big heart With his own blood.
“ ‘You’re a captain,’ I said % to him. ‘You’re always cautioning the boys to report wounds and get them cared for. You. stayed up there two days and you never even told me about it.’ “ ‘Honest, chaplain.’ he replied, ‘I forgot all about it. You know we had orders to hang onto that dinky hill. And we were awful busy.’ ”
INCREASE IN 'POTATO YIELD
V Average in This Country Har Risen From 71 to 87 Bushels Since 1894. Washington.—The yield of potatoes per acre Is gradually increasing, the records of the bureau of crop estimates show. During 1866-1874 the average was 91 bushels, but it declined to 71.3 bushels in 1875-1894. Perceptible recovery was made in the following ten-year period and a much larger recovery, rising to a new highwater mark, was reached in 1905-1914, with its average yield of 97 bushels per acre. This increase is due to various causes, among which are greater specialization of production, more intensive treatment ipid higher fertility of ■ j,he soil. The, ten-year average yield of 97 bushels, per acre in 1905-1914 was followed by 96.3 bushels In 1915,* 80.5 bushels in the very low year or 1916, and lf)0.8 bushels in 1917. Compared with population the yield of potatoes per acre declined from 1866-1874 to 1905-1914. The gain of production .per capita in recent years has been more because of increased acreage than because of Increased production per acre. \ 1
Why the Marine Is a Fighting Demon
Esprit de Corps and Unceasing Training Give Power to the Soldiers of the Sea
THE FRENCH, tired from countless attacks, were filtering to the rear. The roads were choked with war material, with roaring trucks and rushing camions. Everywhere the refugees were hurrying toward safety, carrying with them their household effects, dragging their cows behind their heavily loaded wagons—sad, yet smiling and striving to be brave. The last great German drive was on, pounding, relentlessly forward toward Paris. But in contrast to this picture was another, that of great trucks crammpd with full-chested, steel-muscled men, hastening to the front. Men from the far-away were these new warriors of new vim'and new ideas and new methods of fighting. Men who knew Germany only as a thing to be defeated, who never had met Fear, who laughed at the horrors of the Huns, They were United States marines.
But the odds were figainst them. The Germans had started their rush — the swift-moving hordes must be halted. And more than that, halted by a body of men who must make up for their inferiority in numbers by a superiority of fighting power. The trucks churned on. Children, standing b/ the roadway, threw flowers to those marines and cheered them. White-haired old women, rocking atop the refugees’ carts, called a blessing to them. But would' they—these bronzed giants from overseas —be able to achieve the impossible? More than one wondered—and hesitated to think of the outcome. A night in an open wheat field. Then the great elfish! And out of the great tangle of war’s complex nfachinery came a message that was electrical in its results. The weary French took on new life. The British, standing only a few months before with their backs to the wall, fretted in a new anxiety to attack. The whole great organization of civilization, fighting there on the western front, 1 suddenly saw tlie dawn of a new <say, and the brightness of a new hope. For those United States marines had done the'impossible. Fighting against odds of nearly ten to one, the marines had turned back the enemy—and started the rearward rush toward Berlin that still is continuing. They had proved that they were the real supermen. -Marines with as many as tdh and eleven bullet holes in them still fought forward. Others, ordered to the rear, obeyed, only to return without waiting to have their wounds dressed. Men mortally wounded swept on until the machine-gun nests of the enemy were captured—then died. Still others, felled by the enemy, forgot their own wounds that they might ask of the wounds of some comrade, or Insist on not being given aid until later—there were who muist be cared for first.
Why the Marine Is Fighter. And why? Why should this body of men—and remember, the total authorized strength of the United States marine corps Is only 75,000 —be able to accomplish so much? Why should they be the real “supermen” which Germany believed it alone possessed—until Chateau Thierry and Belleau wood and Bouresches? Why. should they be able to accomplish such deeds of heroism that the grateful French nation ordered the name of Belleau wood changed to Bois de la Brigade de Marines? The answer comes In two things- I —esprit de corps and the marine training. There’s never an idle second In the life of a marine. His training never ceases —apd, more than that, there never is a time when the belief Is not
WORTH KNOWING
I Pecan shells have been found to contain enough, protein and fat to make them useful when ground for stock 1 feed. .., i Ice Is said to have been cut and harvested for storage in 1805, ■ from, a small lake near Cambridge, * Mass. ITRe duchess of Marlborough, formerly Consuelo Vanderbilt, has been •1 candidate for a seat In the Londoc county council.
constantly inculcated in the mind of a marine that he must do superhuman things simply because he is a marine,, and that his own conscience will call him a criminal against himself and his corps if he doesn’t. The first thing that a marine applicant gets when he reaches the eastern training camp at Paris island, 8. C., or the western camp at Mare island? Cal., Is a heart-to-heart talk. And it’s a talk that’s a work of art—• a speech that tells of the history of the corps, from the beginning of the Continental marines In 1740 to the present day, the great things the marine corps has done and the great things It has stood for. A talk that tells of honesty and straightforwardness and decency and cleanliness. . The Creed of the Marine. And then, when the time of probation is over and the enlistment completed, the marine learns this: “I am a soldier, though not an army soldier. I go to sea, yet am not a sailor. I am older than the soldier of the army or the sailor of the navy. I fight my country’s battles everywhere and anywhere—in the trenches in France, on ships at sea, or in airplanes above. It’s all the same. “I raised „the first American flag On foreign soil, more than a century ago. I carried Old Glory into action in Tripoli, Egypt, West Africa, the Fiji islands, Sumatra, Hawaii, Mexico, China, Uruguay, Paraguay, Alaska, Panama, Formosa, Korea, Nicaragua, Cuba, Santo Domingo, Haytl, and now I’m with General Pershing in France. I carry a punch in either hand. I’m a hard-fisted, three-way fighting man. I’m a soldier of the navy, a U. S. marine.” That’s the beginning. That’s the thing that send! the real flush of pride Into the new marine’s heart. And when he walks out upon the training ground? and the physical director Darks out an order to seize the horizontal bar and chin ten times, that' new marine does it! He may never have chinned himself before. His muscles may ache and twitch and do
Became Popular at Once
Few Songs of the Sea Securad Public •Favor as Quickly as “Life on the Ocean Wave." Tie best and most popular of all the songs of the sailor boys Is Bpes St 1 gent’s “A Life on the Ocean Wave.” The words of this song were written for Henry Bussell, the well-known music composer. The subject of the song was suggested to Sargent as he was walking one breezy, sun-bright morning in spring on the Battery in New York, and looking out on the ships and small craft, leaving or entering the harbor. Having completed the- song Sargent went to the office of ttie Mirror, wrote .the words and showed them to his friend; George P. Morris. After reading the piece, Morris said: “My dear boy. this is not a song; it will never do for music, but I should like to pdblish it in the Mirror.” . Sorfb days after the publication, Sat gent met Bussell, wlio said: “Wiiere is that song you promised me?” Sargent’s reply was: “I tried
Philadelphia' possesses the largest organ in the wosd. with 232 speaking stops and 18,146 pipes. In a French factory turbine* are driven by water from a reservoir on a mountain 600 feet above it. - A good substitute for platinum for electrical purposes Is silver, 70 per cent: palladium, 25 per cent, and cotalt 5 per cent. The latest ttgurfe* show that there are 44500 picture houses in the United Kingdom, with an annual attendance of 1,075,000,000.
strange things afterwards—but h« raises and lowers himself those ten times—because he’s a Unite/1 States marine! J ' Urged to Better Things. There’s something inside him, urging him on, telling him that he must be better, better, better every hour,, every minute, every second of his life. And when the long houre of drilling start, that marine is not only willing to go the limit —but eager! He’s a marine—he’s simply got to know everything and, be everything and do everything! Facing him everywhere are signs: “If You Don’t Know You* Get Killed.” And the marine knows. He trains tyith the naked bayonet. He goes out upon the rifle range, and if he doesn’t qualify as an expert, a marksfnnn or a sharpshooter he kicks himself all the way back to camp, and sits up nights to dream out a way of making 'it up In some other way. Exercises. Training.- Work. Play.; They follow one after another In rushing sequence. Men box —because the movements of boxing are similar to those of bayonet fighting. They h(\,ve “pulling up” exercises—because that helps one to get in fin’d out of trenches. Swimming—and the men even march to the swimming hole — because - thfit develops every muscle t>f the body. % Drill, hour after hour, while sergeants barh and the nian who misses a step is his own worst enemy. Lectures, more drill, more work, more play, more training. In seven weeks, the body and the mfnd of the murine are at the edge of perfection. And then, while the band plays and the “left-bebinds” cheer/ he embarks for France, via Quantieo, there to work again, play again and’drill again. And not until the moment of the “zero” when the signal calls for fighting demons to rush over the top, Is thut training relaxed for a moment. After that it’s not a question of training—but the results of it. And Chateau Thierry and Belleau wood have told those to the world.
my hand at one and' failed. Morris tells me it won’t answer.” “Let me see the piece,replied Russell. Bussell was so pleased with it that he went Into a music store near by, and in the-back room In a few moments he composed the music to which It is ncv sung. It at once became a favorite and very shortly the bands were playing It and the sailors were singing U. .
Hard to Sleep in Red.
Sympathy was offered in London. England, thk_other day to a man from The front who would not reach his Yorkshire home till the next morning. “Nay, it doesn’t worry me at all that, doesn’t the journey,” he said. “I shall do well enough in the train. The trouble Is when you've been roughing at the. front that you can’t settle dowft to a bed. t’ve slept on cobbles. I’ve slept In tnud, in u shed, In a ditch, but wheifl came home for my two blightles do you think* I could get to sleep? No, I felt ‘fair smothered’ by the beds.”
BRIEF BITS
Surnames cannot be traced farther back than the latter part of the tenth century. The five largest counties in Ireland are: Cork, 1,838,931 acres; Galway, 1,502,362; Mayo, 1,818,130; Donegal, 1,190,268, and Kerry, 1,159.556 acres. * The orauge was 4 originally a pparshapetl fruit, but not much larger than a cherry, and it Is said that Its evolution Is due to 12 centuries of cultivation.