Show MAGAZINE SECTION THE HERALD-REPTJBLICA- MAGAZINE SECTION SALT LAKE CITY UTAH SUNDAY FEBRUARY 18: 1917 N- They Are the Fellows in the Trenches Who Are Not Only Dying for France But Enduring Things Be Mrs William K Vanderbilt the Only American Woman to Visit the City of Verdun9 Wouldn9t Wear a Helmet -- yond Endurance and Still Living t Because r Was coming W B Seabrook of Atlanta tells here of the heroism ofthe French soldier at Verdun “where flesh and blood held fast when fortifications of stone and' earth failed “ This is the fourth of a series written for 'this section by Mr Seabrook in which he is describing his personal experience last spring and summer as an ambulance driver in France B ranches So it comes about that claimed - f - : at least they don't knock over my coffee pot!” It was the only comment I ever heard her make abont the bombardment Later when some of ns went to Paris on leave we brought her dozen glasses and a shirt for her tie boy I suppose she is still there making coffee There was a permanency about everything she did The but-soshe sewed on my underwear have never come off As a rule the few women who remain in a bombarded territory seem less afraid than the men Whether it is really superior courage or defective imagination I do not know but they treat the “arrivals” with less interest and less respect than we “Provided the next of Verdun means for civilization and night as our little cars mount the Unbe- your own tin cup” as her glasses had all been smashed long before Her only help was a fifteen-year-ol- d niece a slender little gamine who tended the pot swept the floor and flirted with the soldiers when her aunt’s back was turned We nicknamed the niece “Mimi” and because of her raven hair and black ej’es eventually elaborated it to “Mimi Noire” 'Widow Laurent’s kitchen was our regular gathering place while we were off duty and some of the most vivid stories we ever heard were told tbentby the soldiers on their way to or from the trenches When a shell dropped through the roof of a neighbor’s house and killed seven out of the twelve soldiers who happened to be in at the time we thought maybe the widow would leave and we offered to take her and her belongings back to Bar L Due in our big truck but she preferred to stay on She talked little and we were never able to figure out whether her staying was sublime devotion or mere force of habit One afternoon when the gunners who wanted our railroad station were groping a little more wildly than usual they happened to drop an Austrian “150” which is a wicked shell in her cabbage patch just outside the open kitchen door Several jagged pieces imbedded themselves in the wall around the doorway and a small splinter came zinging through above our heads Nobody was hurt and when the smoke cleared away the widow gave a little sigh and ex- By W B Seabrook UT the real hero of Verdun ant of the war is the poilu in the trenches The immortal defi “Vous lij passerez pas” was coined in the trenches and the triumphant “On les aura” which we now hear on every side was likewise born of the poilu The man in the trenches is the essential factor The rest of us back here among the batteries and observation points and postes de secours are engaged solely in the work of backing up his efforts Whether generals artillerymen stretcher bearers or ambulance drivers we are here only to protect and serve the man out yonder — preparing the way lie fore him with shell and shrapnel when he advances— transferring him back covered with itself together for the night march np blood and mud and glory when his h rough the hills and down into the work is done History will tell what the holding It Ver- what it has cost France r but onlv those dun hill among the convoys and amid of us who have been here will ever the dust we overtake and pass Joseph know what it has meant for the indi- and his comrades trudging along tovidual soldier They are not merely ward the battle front from which they d ing for their country They are know many of their number will not Despite that realization enduring and still living Where all return semblance of trenches and shelter have which shows plainly' enough ii their been destroyed the line is still firm faces they find courage to recognize Where fortifications of earth and us and shout a passing greeting “Remember I am billeted for a restone have not availed flesh and blood turn ride in the belle petite yoiture” have held fast One of the men in the ranks of our cries Joseph and though he was speakwe called ing in fun his wish later came tritfe division Joseph Bonvin At Carabet Rouge we saw the last him (and he is a real person though Bonvin is not his real name) has told of them —for a time Having reached us something of what Verdun meant this point they turned sharply to the to him and his experience multiplied left and disappeared into the seven by twelve thousand’ is what it meant foot boyau to our division His story is typical The rest of Joseph's story we When we first made Joseph’s ac- learned later as he lay on a cot in the quaintance he was lying under a tree little church at D at La Veuve inhaling the perfume of As they went further into a rose watching the summer twilight the boyau the stench and noisfe kept deepen over the wheat fields speculat- increasing The French curtain fire ing in undertones with his comrades shrieked over their heads protecting on whether the division would be sent their advance and crashing above the to Verdun or La Somme’ We all German trenches now only a few hunknew pretty well it would be one or dred yards distant German shells the other for the Twelfth is one of were breaking all around and in many the great “fighting divisions” of the places the became un an boyau only corps and is technically known as a protected mass of overturned earth “ division d'attaque” Some of Joseph’s comrades began to Joseph guessed it would be Verdun drop arounrl him for the division sufand one night soon afterward the fered a 10 cent loss before they Verdun call came Aroused at mid- ever reachedper the line night by the bugles with his twelve It was midnight when they arrived thousand comrades Joseph marched out of La Veuve at 1 a m in the at the shell craters and hastily recon darkness and rain pan pan pan structed earthworks that had once been the first line trenehes —for neither through the mud liis back bent beneath rifle mess kit knapsack blan French nor German have any real ket roll cantines cartridge belt trenches in the proper sense of the word on this front They simply dig weighing in all some forty-fiv- e into the shell-toground and hold on pounds Sonte of us shook hands with eociation football on Sunday afterhim as he filed past the church corCrouching elbow to elbow with his noons He is engaged to be married ner and we wished his load could have comrades Joseph' waited for orders His particular part in an attack is is a lover of flowers and sings charmbeen lighter ing ballads to the accompaniment of He marched till dawn and about that of “nettyoyeur des tranches” the ' guitar means' which “trench cleaner” in station railroad the at sunrise arrived This was the Joseph who leaped where they loaded him literal English but he uses a long after liis comrades of H shrieking like a with some of his comrades into a box knife and an automatic pistol instead madman when the attack began car marked in white letters “8 of a broom and it is the German Three minutes! afterward hie found chevaux 40 hommes” (eight horses trenches and not the French that he himself- - standing knee-dee- p among or 40 men) and he sank down into “cleans” Joseph is small wiry musbodies covered from head to writhing rapidthe straw and went to sleep All cular capable of lightning-lik- e foot with blood his ‘own blood and night long until noon the train rum- ity in: his movements!' He follow’s im- that of a dozen Germans ' He V was y bled for such trains move slowly and mediately behind the bayonets leapwounded the shoulder in but slightly into the carried trench or position finally they arrived at the Revigny ing he had idone his work" ) :j railroad head A breakfast of hot shooting and slashing as he leaps pishalf-buriThirty seconds later he was coffee cheese and' hard army bread tol in left hand and knife in " right' by an exploding1 shell his hip and a crowded barn to sleep the rest fighting it out to the death with those ! and left arm shattered1 ! 'V of the day in (for new troops moving whom th bullets and bayonets overy i ’ft' Thirty hours later his surviving toward Verdun are “fed up” on sleep looked as they swept onward Joseph seeing that they will hot get miicfe isn’t so strong for the pistol which he comrades found him lying among the after they arrive) and Josephus uses principally to protect himself corpses still' conscious : and moaning ? loaded into another box car to be but he is a wonder with the knife for water ’y- '’p 'v As soon as it was dark enough the transported to the village of X—— — Before the war he was a bookkeeper stretcher-beare- r most in diverParis and his behind Verdun brutal kilometers six brought him back to only where a hypodermic injection where the division stops a day to get sion was the mild French form' of At top “The Surrender” an artist’s conception pf a scene in the fighting near Verdun center si-- 1 witnesses of the destructive fire at the front bottom a German field kitchen preparing food for the warriors of the kaiser lit-le- nt ns t country town and those of us who wished have been permitted to rent rooms in the private houses and enjoy the unaccustomed luxuiy of a bed with sheets and pillows On Sunday afternoon the band of the One Hundred and Sixth regiment assembled in the public- - square for a - i ‘ ed c i w -- as-(Caba- ret! r' s :y One afternoon when the small Auswere droptrian “ seventy-seven- s” ping at random over a landscape some distance behind the lines we stopped to converse with an old woman in a field who has bandaging the leg of concert Musicians exercise the du her cow at the front ties of stretcher-bearer- s “Rien qu’un petit eclat” she told and of the thirty whom we had heard us and went on about her business in play in La Veuve twelve were miss- - I the field “Nothing but a little shell ing seven of them killed and the other splinter” which had wounded her five wounded They played music grazing cow It was a mere unimporfrom Massenet’s “Manon” and a tant incident like getting snagged on part of Tchaikowsky ’s “Symphonic a barbwire fence I think she would have regarded it in the same light if Pathetique” Such strange contrasts does this the “eclat” had been in her own leg war offer Last week the horror of land would have bandaged it just ns exploding shells mingled with the (calmly screams aud groans of wounded and This was several miles back I only chil-sa- w music week this two women actually in front of laughing dying I dren green trees brooks fountains the French batteries during the six singing birds old women in white caps months I was in France seated peacefully in their doorways The first was a mystery One was abont dawn I shelling peas climbing morning $ low speed up the bill northeast of in But we soon went baek to work Verdun when noticed a liThere was very little civilian popula- mousine with aI helmeted military easdriver tion left in D— — when we returned down its toward way carefully ing the latter part of July and parked me As it passed I had a glimpse of our cars again in the shadow of the the occupant a pretty girl hudlittle church that had been “ turned dledsingle in the comer wrapped up as if into a hospital” The Germans didn’t she were cold in what looked like a card) much about the village proper crimson-line- d cloak was but they were anxious to “get” the so blonde and opera and soShe out of lovely railroad station just behind it shell-toon hillside that that “dpla l wondered every afternoon toward tea time mg-if the ’Could ularly as clockwork they used to drop I ' from twelve to eighteen hi sheila m forth men at tL poste had seen on us at intervals of three her too and she was a topic of conbetween each' shot It was versation for weeks afterward twelve or eighteen' though I WTe never knew whether she was a ' any idea-whsecret service agent or merely an ofThey were shooting from out of ficer’s sweetheart who had risked her sight behind the hills some seven or life to spend a few hours at the front eight miles away and they never it got ’ ’ the railroad station though with the man she loved Such things but they ocea-bthev came ertremely close sometimes I rc 8‘rilv foMdenthe same hPPn just they managed to smash lot of The other woman I saw in front of houses in the as bjr accident ‘ Mrs William K Van- was guns (the it were I derbilt She had given a great deal Across the street from where we time and of money io American amwere parkedMived a little woman bulance work and one fine morning known 'as the Widow Laurent who was one of the few who had refused onr general field service director to leave She had stayed to make cof- Piatt Andrew brought her out from fee for the passing troops and many Paris to see what we were doing a worn-oPoilu from the Vaux and around Verdun She accepted tea in a tin cup and Fleury trenches used to Ait beside the widow’s big open fireplace and bless seemed charmed with the other crude her name She had been there from hospitality we had to offer but she the first and was still there making ( balked at putting on one of our steel coffee when we left: Over her door helmets because she thought it was hung a painted pine board saying unbecoming and - subsequently rode “Cafe Cliaud’ a toute heure” ” and away bareheaded in her simple red underneath in smaller letters the cross nurse ’8 costume to visit our French equivalent of “ please bring postes de secours 1 g m do m mercifully eased his suffering while the temporary bandages applied by liis comrades were removed and replaced ’ by better dressings So lie bad his wish though he was too far gone to knowit We brought him back to Dugny in one of our “ belles ‘petites voitures” and one of our own men rodo inside (against all rules and precedents) to make it a little easier for him in case he should regain consciousness It makes if infinitely more real and personal and infinitely more terrible — th i s ' transportatio n of : men whose names we know of friends with whom we were singing and playing football in the sunshine only a few days- ago at La V euve— i t makes our work harder in a way but at the same time more worth while : to well: is Also he Joseph going get is going to have the croix' de guerre and the medaille militaire' As soon os he is strong enough to survive a railroad journey liewill complete the last stage of liisOdyssy as he began it in a box car marked “8 chevaux 40 hommes’ y For Joseph - the ' great" war is over - " ?y r I1 f : He will be tenderly cared for in some big hospital in the interior his sweetheart' will come to visit him in the ward and as soon as he is able to hobble about on crutches they w’ill bc married Her husband will be a hero lie is onp of the men who have saved France But he will be a cripple for life Multiply Joseph by thousands of other Josephs who have gone through like experiences — then add the tragic background of the still other thousands of Josephs who will never come back to their sweethearts and you may begin to have some idea of what it means to hold Verdun - -- : Ancerville July— eighty miles behind the lines — This time we earned and needed our repose To sleep all We want and eat all we want and do nothing from morning until night seems the ultimate joy: We are far from the sight and sound of war among civilians and women and children The only reminder of Verdun is the presence everywhere of oiir soldiers billeted in the barns and houses as they were at La Veuve V Ancerville is a large7 prosperous - 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