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Show ADVENTURERS' CLUB Up. HEADLINES FROM THE LIVES i? OF PEOPLE LIKE YOURSELF! "The Bomb in the Boxcar'' HELLO, EVERYBODY: You know, sometimes there's a lot of difference between be-tween what people may think of a man and what he thinks of himself. In the case of John Feen of Miami, Okla., for instance, there are people who think he is a hero. During the war, his officers were all for recommending John for decoration, because they thought a certain brave act of John's deserved a medal if any act of heroism ever did. But that's what the other folks think of it. Just between us, John doesn't share their views at all. In John's own estimation he's just a doggone careless sap, and whatever happened was his own fault in the first place. And he deserved de-served to be shot a heck of a lot more than he deserved a medal. That's what John thinks about it. He swears that what he did wasn't heroism at all. Well you can decide that for yourself. But there's one thing I'm certain of. It may o it may not have been heroism but it sure was adventure! Now let's take this yarn to Siberia and tag along with that little bunch of American soldiers who stayed over there after the war to clean up some of the tag ends of the Big Unpleasantness. Two bat-tallions bat-tallions of the Twenty-seventh infantry were quartered at Berosovka, trying to keep a bit of order in a land where both law and order had broken down. The bandit leader, Seminoff, with a large band of Cossacks, Cos-sacks, was plundering and looting and murdering in the region, using an armored railroad train as a base of operations. And on January 5, 1920, word came that he was headed toward Berosovka. As He Leaned Forward, There Was a Sharp, Ominous Click. Both battalions were ordered to the field, and John Feen was in that gang, carrying a rifle and a knapsack full of hand grenades. I'd like to tell you more about that scrap with Seminoff's Cossacks, but that's an adventure story all in itself. All I can tell you here is that the Yanks waited for Seminoff's armored train, blew up the track in front of it, and bombed and fought their way into the cars. On the last charge, John took what few grenades he had left out of his knapsack He leaped forward and dropped on the pile of coats. and stuffed them In his pockets. Then the fighting was over and the Americans were climbing into the tiny box cars of a troop train that had come out from Berosovka to get them. In the car John was in, the boys built a fire In the tin stove, peeled oft their sheepskin coats and threw them In a pile on the floor. Then they flopped on the floor and tried to get a little sleep. The fire blazed np, and the little car became unbearably hot. The coats were close to the stove, and John was afraid they'd be scorched. He got up to move them. As he leaned over and slipped his arm under the pile there was a sharp, ominous crack, and instantly, every one of those tired men leaped to his feet. They knew all too well what that sound was a grenade, getting ready to explode. Someone had left that grenade in his coat pocket, and John, In picking up those coats, bad accidentally dislodged the pin! "Faces," says John, "became wax-like as men asked themselves whose coat It was, and how far down in the pile the bomb lay. We were all praying it was on the bottom where the whole pile of coats would cover it. Then maybe some of us might have a chance. If it wasn't if it blew up high-wide and handsome in the crowded quarters of that little car the slaughter would be appalling. "The swaying boxcar seemed to creak the fatal words, 'Ten seconds to live . . . ten seconds to live.' Ten seconds more then nine then eight. The deep rumble of the wheels on the tracks below sounded like muffled drums and the wind outside howled a mournful 'Litany of the Dead.' The tiny candle that lit the car flickered spasmodically for a moment and died. The gloom closed in and still we waited." Up to that time everyone had been too stunned to move. A crowd of tight-lipped doughboys stood motionless, waiting for death. John Feen was the first one to recover his senses. He screamed to that bunch of men to lie down and that broke the spell. A dozen heavy bodies thudded to the floor. One man swore aloud. Another sobbed and a third muttered a woman's name. But John was still on his feet. He was standing right over that bomb, and for a brief second his lips moved. He was praying. John's Body Protects Others From Grenade Blast. But it was only for a moment. There was hardly any time for prayer. Three or four seconds more and that bomb would be going off. And he had a job to do before that happened. The prayer had hardly left his lips when he leaped forward dropped on that pile of coats his arms hugging them to him like a hen mothering her brood. That deadly engine of destruction buried somewhere in that pile of coats might blow him to bits, but the other fellows in the car would have a chance. One second two seconds and then there was a roar that sounded to John as if it had come from the bowels of Hell itself. Bright scarlet flashes streaked the interior of the car. He felt the pile of coats heave beueath him and then John just doesn't remember any more. The first thing he remembers after that was that someone was lifting him. He heard someone else talking, and the words sounded faint, and far away, and hollow as if the man who was speaking them was talking into a barrel. Slowly, consciousness came back to him. He opened his eyes. He remembered now that bomb! Anxiously he counted the white faces that were bent over him. They were all there, those buddies bud-dies of his. He sighed in relief and fainted. John woke up in the hospital at Berosovka a bit surprised to find that he was still alive. He probably wouldn't have been alive if that bomb hadn't been down at the bottom of the pile of coats thick sheepskin coats that stopped the flying bits of steel. As it was, his arm was shattered and full of bits of corrugated metal and it would have to come off. A few days later, while he was recuperating from the amputation of that arm an officer came to his bedside and told him he was going to be recommended for decoration but John told that officer to lay off. He didn't want any medals. He didn't think he deserved any. All he had done was what he knew darned well it was his duly to do. "You see," he says, "it was my coat pocket that held that grenade!" Copyright. WNU Service. |