Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 62, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 March 1919 — SAM AND WIFE CAUSE STIR [ARTICLE]

SAM AND WIFE CAUSE STIR

GAY BROADWAY CRANES NECK AS RENSSELAER BOY AND FRENCH BRIDE LAND. Word was received here Thursday by Mr. and Mrs. John Duvall from their son, Sam', announcing the arrival of he and his wife in America from France on the steamer “America.” That the French ambulance driver, and his demure little French wife caused a stir along the Gay White Way in New York is seen from the following article, clipped from the Chicago Daily News of Thursday under a New York date line, and which was written by a New York scribe : “A bride who experienced thirty months of captivity as a German prisoner of war and then fell in love with the American soldier who rescued her came to America today as the wife of Samuel O. Duvall, formerly an Oak Park (Ill.) high school boy. Duvall was a student at the University of Indiana, living in Rensselaer, Ind., when the war broke out He joined the French forces in the spring of 1916 as an ambulance driver. —He served eontinuously with the French on every fighting front in France up to the end of the war. He was decorated by the French three times for bravery, twice under fire and once for capturing a German scout, whom he compelled to surrender on the Chateau Thierry front at the point of a monkey wrench. He was tinkering with his ambulance en-. gine when he spotted the German, and, racing after him armed only with the wrench, ordered him to stop. The fugitive threw up his hands and cried: “Don’t shoot!” It was when Noyon fell in February, 1917, that the Oak Park ambulance man found the French refugee who became his wife July 22, 1917. She was hiding in a cave when the French broke the German line and recaptured the city which had fallen into the hands of the enemy the second month of the war. The girl whom fate had destined to be Mrs. Duvall was made a prisoner during the first inrush of Germans into France. She had been acting as interpreter for the English at Noyon, her home, and as the Germans advanced too rapidly to permit the population to escape she fell into the hands of the invaders. “They made me work like a servant in the home of my parents,” she said, relating the story of her imprisonment as she clung bo the side of her big American boy. . She is a slight, dark eyed, dark haired girl who had been raised in luxury until the enemy seized her parents’ home and enslaved her. She was compelled •to wait on German officers, who used her home as a headquarters. She was told it was her punishment for having aided the English as interpreter. She*had been hiding three days and two nights in the cave when Duvall found her.Duvall, who brought home the Belgian war cross in addition to the French decorations and a bride, came on the transport America which came in with 7,012 troops simultaneously with the arrival of the hospital ship Comfort, on which were 403 sick ands wounded American soldiers. Most of the men on the America were of the 27th New York division of the 104th, 105th and 166th field artillery regiments coming complete.” Mr. and Mrs. Duvall are expected to arrive in Rensselaer within a day or so, according to advices received here.