OCR Text |
Show MOST PATCHED-UP II INJf ABMY Lieutenant Nungesser Premier Pre-mier French "Ace," Has This Distinction. By ERNEST P. ORR, International News Service Staff Correspondent. PARIS, March 10 (By mail). The most patched-up man. in any army In the world is Lieutenant Nungesser, France's premier' pre-mier' "acew since the death of Guynemer, and who, despite the assertions of doctors doc-tors that he would never be able to fly again, has just brought down his thirty-first thirty-first German machine. He has been three times reformed from the army, but refuses to accept his discharge, dis-charge, and his latest victim Is proof that, despite the long; list of hie injuries, he has lost none of his cunning in the air. After his last mishap, a bad automobile automo-bile accident, when the airman's chauffeur chauf-feur suddenly dropped dead at the wheel, piling the car up in a-ditch, killing one of the aviator's companions and injuring Nungesser severely, the medical authorities authori-ties declared absolutely he was done for and assured the lieutenant he could never hope to manipulate his machine. Nungesser was in the hospital exactly two weeks, although the doctors had said it would be at least a month before he would be able to move, and probably six weeks before he could be discharged from the institution. The aviator only smiled, j and at the end of his two weeks was! out and about in another machine, his head swathed in bandages, using two canes when he tried to bobble a few steps. At the expiration of the six weeks, when the doctors had figured he might be permitted to "leave," he was back at the front. During one of his previous "periods of convalescence," which Nungesser i passed, as usual, at the front, he brought , down nine German ' machines. The of-i of-i ficial list of his injuries is the longest and most extraordinary of any man In the French army, and comprises the following: fol-lowing: Fracture of the skull, concussion concus-sion of the brain, five fractures of the upper jaw, for which a great part of the bone had to be removed; two fractures frac-tures of the lower jaw, shell splinters in the right arm, dislocation "of both right and left knees, bullet through the mouth which completely destroyed the roof, atrophy of the lower tendons of the left leg, atrophy, of the calf, two subsequent fractures of the jaw, discolation of the collarbone, internal injuries, dislocation of the left wrist, dislocation of the right ankle. |