The Bismarck Tribune Newspaper, November 10, 1928, Page 10

wesHtasS Sreesrsagcsaote mm OsPEaZ seerssa . fat from my le; VETERAN NEVER | AT FRONT PAYS BIGGEST PRICE Hurt in Truck Accident, Serv- iceman Spends Ten Years * in Hospitals ALWAYS OPTIMISTIC Bones and Flesh Grafted by Surgeons in Effort to Aid in Walking ashington, Nov. 10.—Armistice nds Corporal Walter A. Kleck ering from one more of a series of operations designed to restore the use of his hips and enable him to walk. Corporal Kleck has spent more time in hospitals as a result of his war injuries than any other dis- abled veteran now at the govern- ment’s great Walter Reed Hospital. He hasn’t walked for five ye Corporal Kleck has been display- ing his heroism in the ten years since the war. He did not fall glor- iously on the battle field, victim of gas or shell. That wasn’t his job. He was never less than 20 miles from the front, for he was driving a supply truck and when he was wounded it was because one truck crashed into another. an But Corporal Kleck is a victim of the war. His sacrifice has been as great as anyone’s and more than once in these ten years it has brought him to the brink of death. There are many other disabled vet- erans today, suffering, who were not hurt in actual combat. Some of them feel kéenly the fact that it wasn’t a bullet instead. Theirs, they have often told hospital officials, was the worst luck of all. This story is of what the war meant to Kleck and, inferentially, to so many others. Kleck, upon re- quest, told it as follows: “My home is in Niagara Falls, N. Y. Iwas a metal worker. I was 21 when I was drafted, sent to Camp Dix and then to France, as a member of the 312th supply train. I was ut to driving a big truck. Our Seiqdacters were at St. Nazaire and it was our job to get all kinds of supplies to the front. Injured in Truck Crash “My troubles began at Nevers, af- ter a year over there. We were driv- ing from St. Nazaire to Dijon. The convoy stopped at the bottom of a hill and the truck back of me had bad brakes. When it struck me I was thrown back in my own truck and wrenched so that I was laid up for several days, wound in adhesive plaster. Then pneumonia and flu got me and I spent my first ten weeks in a hospital. “This was in February, after the armistice. I was sent back to the states and mustered out at Camp Upton in July. I went home for five months and during that time y spine was being treated, because getting worse. entually I was able to work again and went back to my old occu- pation for more than a year. “But early in 1922 my spine and legs gave out on me and they diag- nosed the case as arthritis, “T spent 13 months in the Marine hospital at Buffalo, undergoing physio-therapy. I was just barely able to get around when I was dis- charged, and spent eight months at home again. I couldn’t work, of course. “Next it was three months at the Naval hospital in Brooklyn, with more electricity treatment. “All this time I had been in ter- rible pain. When this pain finally began to decrease I found my spine had become rigid and immovable. “From Brooklyn I came here to Walter Reed, and here my legs be- came flexed, gradually drawing themselves up to a constant sitting position. At times I had 50 pounds of weights on both legs, with the idea of straightening them. “After nine months at Walter Reed they sent me to Hot Springs for electric and hot bath treatment. I was there 22 months and the pain began to subside. For the first 15 months I was in bed, getting up rarely to take the baths. “A year ago last September I was allowed to go hom» again. I could only move about a little, stooped and bent, with two canes. More Hard Luck “On Christmas Eve one of the canes slipped.. I landed on the floor with a broken hip. This time it was five tough weeks at a hospital, and then back to Reed in a plaster cast. “Out of the cast and into a trac- tica, a system of weights and coun- terweights all over the bed pulling at the break in the Bip. and making it straight. It was a lot more pain, of course, but you get used to it in two or three weeks. “Then they found that I had de- veloped ankylosis in both hips. In other words, I hadn’t any hips. They wouldn’t move. Colonel William L. Keller, who does the big operations here, found there was no trace of ee ad hip joints left—just stiff and solid. “So Colonel Keller decided to give me‘some new hips. He had to go in there and chisel where he thought the old ones were, and make new joints. Then he takes and cups it, inding it off to a smooth surface. fore finishing he took a piece of and put it up in the new joint. He got a three-inch spike and put it into the bone, and then he sewed me up. They won't tell me what the spike is for. Other Operations to Come “He did that to hip number one nine weeks ago. Now I can move that hip, and he’s going after the one that was broken. He has to it a-piece of my shin bone to put that one and give a new joint. “After this operation they’ve got to go to the other hip in about oe, aad put another piece “it I won’t have to use re I won't ever be mm “Sm rivate alter ne! sae ae oe oe ole THE BISMARCK TRIBUNF SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 1928 Injured in a truck accident during the World War, Corporal Walter A. Kleck, Washington, awaits another Armistice Day in his hospital cot. He has been unable to walk for five years, like it generally has. I don’t think anything is more painful than ar- thritis. For a year I couldn't even roll over in bed. “But everything’s been done for me that couid be done, and if I get| out I can do leather work, making| pocketbooks and things like that,| and read a_ lot. I’m just tickled to death that I can sit up in this wheel chair, and when I was out in an automobile the other day for four whole hours, the first time in a year, I had the time of my life. ARREST EIGHT ESCAPED MEN Rio Janeiro, Nov, 10.—(#)—An agency dispatch from Para today said that eight convicts who escaped from the French penal colony in the tropical forest of French Guiana had been arrseted. The men, who fled from the settlement of Cayenne, off 3 is the notorious Devil's Island, were seized after four had conspired with a Brazilian boatman to rob and drown their four companions. The eight men escaped on October 2 in a boat owned by a river pirate known as Bideco. Shortly after leaving Cayenne Bideco discovered that four of his passengers carried a large sum of money. He plotted with the others, and the four men were thrown overboard in the vicin- ity of Maguary. The four men who were left to drown were rescued by a passing fishing boat, which took them to Maguary, where they gave the alarm. This resulted in the arrest of Bideco and his accomplices when they arrived at Vigia. The eight escaped convicts were taken to Para later, and confessed that they had been convicted of burglary and robbery in France. ‘1,000 MEN ARE FIGHTING FIRE Los Angeles, Nov. 10.—(?)—The {menacing pillar of fire shooting heavenward from the burning gas well at Santa Fe Springs, Calif., was declared today by oil company ex- ecutives to have subjected the entire ; petroleum field to danger. Their estimates of damage already caused | by the spectacular blaze ran as high as $5,000,000, Long lines of fire-fjghters worked feverishly through the,early moxning hours, struggling to set up a network of pipelines in an effort to play heavy streams of mud and steam on the raging well. Nine derricks have been destroyed, another well was threatening to burst into flames, and production at 14 wells has been stopped, a consideration which was taken into the damage estimate. More than a thousand men have hash mustered to fight the roaring laze, BRIDGE FALLS PREY 10 LAVA Stricken Volcanic Sicilian Region Evacuated by Dis- tressed People Catania, Sicily, Nov. 10.—(%)— The railway bridge at Mascali today fell prey to the molten torrent of lava pouring down the eastern slope of Mount Etna, which has destroyed the town of Mascali and was dev- astating the neighboring village of Nunziata. The flow across the railroad tracks cut communications between Catania and Messina. Steamship service be- tween the two places was inaugu- rated, four trips being made daily by four ships. The village of Carrabba was cleared of inhabitants. Factories and mills in the region were being dis- mantled. Small bands of ne’er-do-wells seemed to have concentrated on the {stricken zone from all over Sicily and Calabria. There were a number of arrests of these pillagers. Police and military restrictions were tight- ened up and special passes were re- quired to get near the lava flow. Nevertheless numerous persons lines. A number of small boys armed with long poles got within 10 feet of the flow. They obtained pieces of incandescent lava, which they were selling as souvenirs. Some witnesses were indignantly describing the tactics of farmers and landed proprietors in regions that had been spared. They said that these persons, knowing that many small farmers and old retired couples had been living on their little gardens and were now penniless, were invading the country and offer- ing jobs in the fields and homes at very low wages. The recently impov- |crished people were forced to accept thes jobs in many cass. Nunziata had been completely jevacuated this morning. All orna- ments were removed from the large, handsome church of the village, much to the despair of the populace. When it is considered that Etna’s present eruptive mouth opened at Jonly 3,300 feet above sea level, while the volcano’s height is 10,740 feet, it can be imagined with what force the menacing stream of lava is issuing from it. Peasants’ Plight Pitiable ,The plight of the peasant folk is pitiable. The lava stream poured across land valued at from $2,000 to $2,500 an acre. Those who owned fifteen or more acres of this fruit- ful land were considered rich. This year there had been an enormous de- mand for lemons, which are gath- ered twice yearly. The fruit was bringing nearly 3 cents apiece on the tree, Now the molten stream is creeping through these orchards and destroying them. Once prosperous farmers today were filling their pockets with nuts ———— SALESMAN WANTED by Company manufacturing well known line of farm implements. Give full par- ticulars in letter. 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Others were selling for a song what was left of their once ample stores of fruit and wines, Crowds of spectators were jour- neying to the zone of fire. A communique issued by the vol- cano institute said that at the vent of the volcano the velocity of the eruption was four meters a minute, while the molten stream at its foot was flowing at the average rate of four meters an hour. Above the molten stream masses of clinkers were floating, moving like a swarm of gigantic snails. Developments during the past 24 important outbreak of Mount Etna since 1669 in the point of lava flow. Watchers spent a sleepless night observing the uncanny effects of the molten mass upon what was the richest fruit and grape bearing land of Sicily. The whole ruined country- side was studded with trees burning like torches while the relentless sweep of the torrent was punctuated by strange explosions. Crevices were formed and gave forth a strong odor like gasoline. It was thought that the explosions were due to com- bustion caused by the intense heat of the subterranean gases developed by the putrefaction of vegetable matter in the subsoil which is rich in water. . WIFE ARE ED TO DEATH Rome, Nov. 10.—(AP)—A dis- patch t ofl Tevere from Catani, Sicily, today said an old man and his wife had been burned to death in the lave pouring down the slopes of Mount Etna. The couple refused to leave their dwelling in the town of Mascali, which has since been destroyed, pre- ferring to die there. They later changed their minds and climbed to the roof beseeching rescue. The lake of molten lava had surrounded the house and there was no possibil-| - ity of saving them. They were ob- When You Want Tire Service BISMARCK ACCESSORY & TIRE COMPANY | burned to death when they returned to their home to rescue household goods and were caughe in the rush of lava, SECOND MAJOR HOOPLE Sault Ste. 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