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Show BROADWAY AND MAIN STREET White Horsemen of World War I Still Unexplained By BILLY ROSE As I've mentioned before, whenever I come down with a case of brain-blank I smash the crystal on a cheap wrist watch and mosey mos-ey down to see an old watchmaker on West 11th Street. While he s tinkering with the timepiece, I gab with him about this and that, and by the time I leave my watch has a new crystal and I generally have the material for a column. The other afternoon I noticed an unusual looking clock on his repair bench one with symbols on the dial instead of numerals. "It's a Bavrrian miracle clock," : said the watchmaker, "and each symbol stands for a different miracle. For instance, the little fish represents repre-sents the miracle of the loaves and fishes." "Do you believe in that sort of thing?" I asked. W hither vou gan blasting a patch of ground several sev-eral hundred yards to the right of the machine-gunners an area that was completely deserted. And then half an hour later, for no discernible discern-ible reason, the Germans turned tail and began to run. "At first, the British couldn't believe be-lieve their eyes; then they figured it was some sort of trick although under the circumstances it didn't make military sense to bother with a trick. Finally the English sent out a reconnaissance squad, and it brought back fifty prisoners from various parts of the line. "Each prisoner was examined separately and, according to Captain Cap-tain C. W. Haywood of British Intelligence, In-telligence, each one told exactly the same story. "When the Portuguese regiment regi-ment retreated, the Germans began be-gan to chase after it and only stopped when they saw a detachment detach-ment of cavalry riding forward from the Allied line to outflank them. This confused them because, be-cause, for one thing, cavalry had long been obsolete on the Western West-ern front and, for another, every member of the detachment was dressed in white and riding a white horse. "The artillery was immediately ordered to bombard the horsemen, but when the men in white continued contin-ued charging across the open field despite the curtain of shells, the Germans got panicky and fled." "How about the English gunners?" gun-ners?" I said. "That's the strangest part bf it," said the watchmaker. "Captain Haywood made careful inquiry among his men but he couldn't find a single British soldier who had seen anything in the empty space to the right except space." hole in the Allied line at Mons. One night when it looked as if there was no stopping them, the sky suddenly sud-denly turned yellow and across it-heading it-heading straight for the Jerries-rode Jerries-rode three white figures mounted on white horses, the center rider waving a gold-tipped sword. The enemy took one look, and that was the end of the advance." "Sounds like somebody was teeing things," 1 said. "Thousands of people were seeing things and they ranged from privates to generals. And later that night when several hundred hun-dred of the Germans were captured, cap-tured, to a man they reported having hav-ing seen the figures, too. "The white horsemen didn't show up again until four years later," the watchmaker went on, "and this time they brought along a lot of friends. It was during the last German Ger-man push along the Bethune line, and when a Portugese regiment cracked up under the artillery fire a handful of British machine-gunners were rushed in to plug the hole. The gunners knew they didn't have a chance of getting out alive all they could hope for was to keep the enemy busy until reinforcements reinforce-ments arrived. e THEN CAME THE miracle. Suddenly Sud-denly the German guns switched their range and direction, and be- - jumme think so or not, smiled the old man, BMf Kose "miracles happen all the time. For instance, take the fire in Canada a couple of months ago the one that wiped out almost al-most the entire town but didn't touch the church." "It could have been air currents," I said. "Maybe," said the watchmaker, "but how would you explain away the cross in the sky that two thousand thou-sand Englishmen swore they saw during an air raid in 1944? Or would you rationalize the white horsemen who are accredited with winning two battles in the first World War?" e "TAKE YOUR TIME with the watch and details," I said "Well," said the old gent, "the first time the horsemen appeared was in August, 1914, when the Germans Ger-mans were advancing through a big |