Evening Star Newspaper, December 7, 1930, Page 85

he Swunday Star . Magasine WASHINGTON, D. C, DECEMBER 7, 1930, Features B;:)—k S 24 PAGES. Soldier and Indian-Yogi One Life Has Not Been Enough for Maj. Francis Yeats-Brown of Britain’s Army in India. He Has Had Two—An Officer and a Gentleman, He Also Has Wandered Over India’s - Mystic Trails—.And Emerged With Adventures Enough to Write a Best Seller. E is a yogi. He has delved deeply into the cloudy mysti- cisms of India. He has sat at the feet of a guru and learned of the hidden things, He has lived with the ascetics of the forest and walked with the holy men along dusty roads. He was a friend of the saint lying on the bed of spikes. He was a pupil of the long-suf- fering one at the temple gate who has held his arms above his head so long that he cannot get them down. He has learned occult wisdom from the wonder- working hermit. Well, he is Maj. Francis Yeats-Brown of the 17th Cav- alry, whose autobiography is now a best seller. And he fol- lowed those mystic trails while he was an officer in his regi- ment, one of the crack outfits of the British Indian Army. He lived two lives. On one hand he was the swagger British of- ficer, suave and cool, and per- haps a bit supercilious. He was a first-rate soldier, a veteran campaigner in all sorts of broils, from the World War to guerrilla warfare in the wild mountains of the Afghan bor- der. He was a first-rate polo player and a great hand at the characteristic Indian sport of pig sticking. When he traveled he took along those prodigious quantities of luggage which Englishmen take around with them in India—sun helmets, dress uniforms, golf sticks, ten= nis rackets, a portable bathtub and heaven knows what else. He was an Englishman of Eng- iishmen, an officer and a gen- tleman, tremendously well bred and jolly. He was exceedingly popular . in the Indian Army, although: his brother officers thought him just a bit balmy. * No wonder, because Yeatse Brown was interested in India, genuinely and profoundly in- terested in the country and its people and their ways and be- liefs and culture. And he did a thing which few Englishmen out there have the hardihood to do. “Y.-B.” put on native clothes and lived amohg the people. Of a mystical turn of mind, he studied Indian mysti- cism at first hand, He went about as a native Indian disciple does. In a loin cloth and with & humble demeanor he sough* out learned gurus and sat at their feet among the other pupils. H> wandered the length of India as a native pilgrim seeking the mysterious depths of truth. He learned, and learned well. He became a full- fledged ycgi, one of the few men of the Western World to achieve that mystical distinc- tion. He traveled tens of thousands of miles up and down that mysterious sub-continent. He bathed in the Pool of Eternal Life at Cape Cormorin, the southernmost tip of tropical Hin- dustan. . He frequently made the long pilgrim- age to Benares and other sacred cities along the Ganges and the Jumna to ditcuss ques- tions of religion with the Brahfnan pundits and questions of philosophy with Bisudinan Das, whose disciples regard him as one of the custodiins of the wisdom of the ages. He paid his respects to the Pish-Eyed Goddess, and along with tens of thousands of pilgrims he belped pull the mammoth Car of Juggernaut on its two-mile journey, Yes, that was the “Y.-B.” I knew in India, In the days when I was doing a bit of wander- ing out there myself. And he was my guru. He tried to show me, an American full' of American ideas, the deeper meaning of some of the fantastic things in India. I was in- tensely fascinated by the contradicting duality that was in him, the mystic and the yogi, on one hand, and the sportsman and hard cam- paigning British officer, on the other. He used to tell me of yogi and serpent power. And mmm-wmmmemmnyw, Drawn for the Star's Sunday Magazine by 8. J. Woolf. Maj. Francis Yeats-Brown, the Bengal lancer, By LOWELL THOMAS, when none of us could sleep, he would spin us a yarn of war days. 2 “Y.-B.” had had more than his share of thrilling experiences in the World War, and one was quite a classic. A newspaper copy reader would write the headline thus: SMOKING OPIUM HELPS AVIATOR ESCAPE TURKISH CAPTIVITY or AIRMAN HITS THE PIPE IN GET-AWAY. 'HE literature of escape contains many a strange and desperate ruse. But escape from prison in Turkey is always likely to have a fantastic quality of its own. Crises that should be melodramatic are funny, and situations that to the ordinary eye might look easy and sim- pleYbe;ome perplexingly difficult. “Y.-B.’s” capture was a comedy laid upon a heavily ‘tragic scene. He was attached to Townshend's ill-fated expedition, which ad- vanced on Bagdad, was within an inch of cap- turlncthnlmpofln.ntcltymdthmmde- feated, surrounded and captured. The siege of Author of “Lauterbach of the China Sea,” “The W reck of the Dumaru,” Etc. Kut-el-Amara stands a bitter episode in British military annals, But Yeats-Brown was captured before the disaster of Kut and while hopes ran their highest in the little army that was advancing on Bagdad. The critical point of the fighting was at hand. Townshend's final attack was about to begin. The highly capable von de Goltz and his expert German staff, together with German guns and German-trained Turk- ish regiments, were hurrying south to help the beaten anddisorganized defenders of Bagdad. It was imperative to cut the telegraph line be- hind the city and thus throw the two forces out of communication with each other, thereby further disorganizing the defense in the face of the British onslaught. muskmlulcnedwvuuanrownnndto another friend of mine, Tom White, an Aus- tralian fiyer. There was an old Maurice Farman biplane, as different from the swift, trim air- craft in France as the warfare in the desert wis from that in the trenches that stretched from Switzerland to the Channel. In it he had done routine work of scouting snd bomb dropping. Now he and Tom White were to take the creaking ancient craft and fly behind the Turkish lines and blow up the telegraph line. The plane took off at dawn on the 13th of November, 1915, The pilot steered north over the City of the Caliphs. Yeats- Brown was something of a hu-. man bomb. Stowed away were necklaces of guncotton. In his pockets he had charges to deto- nate the guncotton—pencils of fulminate of mercury, whicH is quite a tremendous explosive. The map they had was incor- rect. The point where they had been instructed to blow up the telegraph line was shown on the chart to lie on the blank desert. In reality it was along the main road, which was lined with camels, soldiers and am- munition carts. The antiquated plane headed farther north along the endless trail of posts and wires to find a deserted point for their landing. Final- ly the road and the telegraph line separated until they were a mile apart. The adyenturers came to earth near an ancient monument, Nimrod’s Tomb. The plane taxied easily along the sand toward the telegraph poles. Nimrod’s Tomb was an un- lucky locality for two British airmen that day. A strong gust of wind whipped the plane along and turned it. A slight splintering of wood. A wing tip had grazed a telegraph pole and the leading edge of the plane was broken. No more flying until part of the wing had been rebuilt, and nfl; Mesopotamian desert was a place for that kind of job. ““We can't get back,” observed Yeats-Brown, “but, anyway, we've got here.” ‘The telegraph poles were near at hand, awaiting the explosive charge. In the distance were figures on horseback, They were Arabs who had seen the plane Yeats-Brown” took a necktie of guncotton, ran to a nearcby telegraph pole, placed the ex- plosive, lighted a fuse and hur- ried back to the plane. By now the distant Arabs had opened fire. Horsemen appeared from the four quarters of the desert. A loud bang, and the post was neatly cut in two. ‘At the sound of the explosion the Bedouins wheeled around and galloped away, but presently re- turned. The marooned airmen encouraged their timidity with several bursts of machine-gun fire from the cockpit of the plane. Another charge of explosive was to destroy insulators and make repair more difficult. Yeats-Brown made the trip to and from the fallen post at his best speed. There was a steady rattle of musketry now, and spurts of sand were kicking up all around. The Arabs concen- trated thelr fire on the spread- ing hulk of the airplane, and missed it as often as they hit it. Yeats-Brown destroyed what was left of the explosive and the papers he carried. The Arabs would not advance, but merely kept on shooting. The situation was becoming ridiculous. “I'm going to see if this old thing won't fiy,” said Yeats-Brown. “Not I,” responded Tom White, who had al- ready found it a hopeless matter. But “Y.-B.” climbed in and left White on the ground. The motor sputtered, and he taxied down the sand, trying to rise. A troop of mounted Turkish gendarmes appeared in the distance. The old bus ran right toward them. It was out of control. Yeats-Brown frantically at the stick in a desperate effort!to hop and sat down righ$ , Where it stayed, lurche