Jasper County Democrat, Volume 21, Number 100, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 March 1919 — SAM DUVALL ARRIVES IN N. Y. [ARTICLE]

SAM DUVALL ARRIVES IN N. Y.

Rensselaer Boy and French Bride Reached Port Thursday. Yesterday’s Chicago Herald-Ex-aminer contained the following dispatch from New York relative to Bam Duvall of this city, who has been in the ambulance service in the French army for the ipaat 18 months: New York, March 13.—After four years as an ambulance driver with the French army, Samuel O. Duvall, Rensselaer, Ind., formerly of Oak Park, returned with a Croix i Guerre, two stars and a bride. When Duvall drove his ambulance into Noyon in 1917 after the first German retreat he found Miss Laura Benoist in the cellar under • the ruins of her home. For thirty 1 months she and her mother 'had been prisoners and her mother had died. Her father, a French soldier, had been captured. Duvall gave Miss Benoist food. He helped her get to Paris, where she had relatives. They were married eight months later. Mrs. Duvall, a pretty but frail little woman, said the Germans cast •her aside as unfit for work. Ablebodied women were deported. She was not harmed by her captors, who paid little attention to her, she says. For months she was under shell fire while the French were trying to retake Noyon. French artillery wrecked her home. Duvall was the first American non-combatant to capture a German. One of his citations shows he attacked an armed Prussian with a monkey wrench and captured him. Within a week Duvall and his bride will visit his uncle, Frank Birch, 327 N. Harvey avenue, Oak Park.