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Show THRILLERS M 81 1 ALLEGED FAKER Rene Bertrand, After Posing Pos-ing as War Hero, Is Arrested Ar-rested in Paris. WEARS NINE MEDALS Tells Wonderful Stories of Exploits; Said to Be an Ex-convict. Correspondence of The Associated Press. PARIS. July 15. The heroic exploits and hairbreadth escapes of D'Artagnan, as narrated by Dumas in "The Three Musketeers," fade into comparative insignificance in-significance when compared with the achievements of Rene Bertrand, as told by himself. Minus an arm and a leg, with nine medals glittering on his breast, and asserting that his body bore more I than thirty bullet and bayonet wounds, "Private Rene Bertrand of the FYench j colonial infantry" posed in Paris as the ! greatest hero of the war. I Now he has been arrested as perhaps i one of the war's greatest fakers, and the j police authorities declare that he lost his ; leg and arm in a railway accident, and that five imprisonments, instead of five citations, compose his record. It was the publication of Bertrand" s photograph in a French newspaper that led to his undoing. Adopted by Aviator. Meantime, while reveling in the fruits of his own romance, Bertrand enjoyed the confidence of army officers and the credit of the leading Paris cafes. One famous and fearless aviator made Private Bertrand his godson and "adopted" him for the balance of the war. The medals he wore included the Cross of the Legion of Honor, the military medal, .the war cross with seven palms and five stars, the British military cross, the Belgian war cross, the colonial medal, the medal of Morocco, the medal for saving life, and the medal for wounds. In addition, he wore the "fouragere" of the Legion of Honor. "Where he got them has not been disclosed, dis-closed, but to account for them Bertrand constructed a story of wonderful incidents. inci-dents. According to this tale, he won the military medal by saving the lives of two officers and was himself wounded In the thigh when surrounded by natives, while fighting with the French territorial terri-torial forces, in Morocco, in 1913. Other Great Exploits. Then, according to his own story. ! Bertrand won the war cross in a patrol exploit in the present war, when, after his companions were killed, he captured : a whole German cooking outfit at Laon, having killed most of the cooks. Next, fighting with the British on the.Somme, he won the military cross by capturing twelve Germans single-handed. Mean- j while. he had been captured five times '. by the Germans, but always managed to j escape. I In the next chapter of his biography i Bertrand appears In the fight around Monastir, on the Macedonian front, where I he simultaneouslv operated four machine guns and wreaked such an awful havoc with the enemv that their attack was beaten off. At the battle of Monastir he essayed to rescue an officer who lay wounded in No Man's Land and was himself wounded in the abdomen. Another Thriller. Despite his pain, he dragged the officer hack to safety and went out again to rescue a wounded nurse. In the last trip his arm was shattered by a bullet and later-was amputated. Next, wo find Bertrand a passenger on board a ship bound for Prance. The torpedo which hit the resse shattered one of Bertrand's legs. Calmly amputating amputat-ing it with, his knife. Bertrand bound up the stump, dragged himself to the rail, threw himself overboard, paused long enough to rescue the captain, and swam to a piece of drift wood, where he lived for three davs and three nights before being rescued bv a Spanish vessel. For thls'Bertrand said he received the medal of tha Legion of Honor. Numerous stars and leaves of palms that Bertrand wore upon his war cross had been acquired, according to his tale, by twelve distinct acts of heroism worthy wor-thy of the coveted cross, but the details of those incidents have not yet been given to the public |