Evening Star Newspaper, December 14, 1930, Page 103

DN, D. C, DECEMBER 14, 1930. e 13 2 Day With the French F oreign Legion ) Command of France, ry Ago by King Louis n a Haven for Disap- post Fvery Nationality, yof Its Wars Is Even an All the Falsehoods by Deserters and the on Writers. gion at Sidi bel Abbes, Algeria. The bespeak its discipline. France and Germany in August, 1914, before foreigners began offering their services to France in case of hostilities. The Italians were the first 1o act; on July 31, over 3,000 of them who were living in Paris met, and voted to form an Italian Legion to fight for France. Other volun- teer corps began enrolling men on August 2, including groups from Alsace and Lorraine, ‘Turkey, Russia, Greece, and within the next few days corps were formed of Belgians, Hol- landers, English, Swiss, Poles, Rumanians, Ar- menians and Syrians. AN American volunteer corps was started on August 5, followed by the organization of groups of Spaniards, Luxembourgers, Portu- guese, Brazilians, Czechs, Ruthenians, Croats, Serbs, Slovagnes, Slovenes, Mexicans, South Americans, Scandinavians; over 800 German and Austrian residents of France offered to fight against their native lands. There was no way under existing laws for a foreigner to enter the French Army except by signing an enlistment for five years in the Foreign Legion, but this difficulty was overcome by the voting of the following decree, dated August 3, 1914: “Enlistments of foreigners in the foreign reg- iments are received for the duration of the war.” The minister of war was authorized the formation of special ‘marching regiments” of tlle Foreign Legion to receive the volunteers, with a nucleus of veteran legionnaires brought from the colonies. Four “marching regiments” were formed, witn training camps scattered all about France. The “4th Marching Regiment” was composed almost entirely of Italians, and was known popularly as the “Garibaldian Legion.” The other three regiments were made up of men from almost every country under the sun, from Abyssinia to Venezuela, from vast Australia down to tiny specks in the ocean, such as St. Thomas. THE period of training was short but inten- sive, and, thanks to the presence in the ranks of a goodly proportion of hardened vete- eran legionnaires, battalions of the “marching regiments” were ready for service in the war zone within six weeks. The 1st and 2d Regi- ments went into the trenches in the Cham- pagne and Aisne sectors in October; in Decem- ber the 3rd Regiment went into line in the Somme region, and the 4th Regiment faced the Germans in the Argonne. The last-named regiment was the first to at- tack the enemy position. In January and Feb- lruary, 1915, the Garibaldians assaulted the enemy lines, and won much honor, but were Iso frightfully decimated that their regiment withdrawn from the line, and dissolved e following March. After a terrible Winter in the trenches at Sketches from life by Jack Casey, American, and himself a Legionnaire, killed in France, showing soldiers of all nations, of the zype?who can never quite give up army life and who drift to the military melting pot of the Legion from the four quarters of the globe. the base of Reims Mountain, the 1st Regiment moved north late in April, 1915, and on May 9 participated in the great attack againsi Vimy Ridge. AMERJCANS in the regiment included Ken- neth Weeks of Boston, Harmon Dunn Hall of St. Paul, Nelson Larsen of Buffalo, Jack Janz of Philadelphia. Jonz was wounded during the battle, in which the legion lost 2,300 men killed and wounded. Kiffin Rockwell of Asheville, N. C, wrote in part of the attack, which was the first great one made by the French agaifst the far-flung German lines since the beginning of trench warfare: “We arrived in the second-line trenches at daybreak, where we took up our position. Within a very few minutes it began to sound s if all hell had broken loose, when our artillery all along the line opened up on the Germans. with our sacs in front of us, and lie there until we had our breath, and the bullets were not quite so thick. Then we would- take our sacs in one hand as a kind of shield, and make another dash. “To think of fear or the horror of the thing was impossible. All I could think of was what a wonderful advance it was, and how every one was*going up against that stream of iead as if he loved it.” THE Moroccan Division, of which the Legion was a regiment, broke so far through the German lines that reserve troops could not get up to help hold on to all the terrain gained, From this new position, a fresh attack was launched on June 16, in which the ranks of the 1st Regiment were again sadly depleted. Amorg the slain were Kenneth Weeks and The cradle of many a Legionnaire, now to be abandoned. The fortress of Grasse- Tilly, at Marseille, France, sent many a soldier out to glory and death in days gone by. ¢ The damndest bombardment imaginable was kept up until 10 o'clock. Along the whole Ger- man line you could see nothing but smoke and debris. At 10 o'clock, I saw the finest sight I have ever seen. It was men from the Premier Etranger crawling out of our trenches, with their bayonets glittering against the sun, and advancing on the Boches. “There was not a sign of hesitation. They were falling fast, but as fast as men fell, it seemed as if new men sprang up out of the ground to take their places. One second it looked as if an entire section had fallen by one sweep of the machine gun. In a few min- utes, a second line of men crawled out of our trenches, and at 7 minutes past 10 our cap- tain called ‘en avant!’” and we went dashing down the trenches with the German artillery giving us hell as we went. “Just as we reached the first-line trenches, a shell burst near the captain, and Jeft his face covered with blood. He brushed his hand across it, and I heard him say, ‘cochons!’ and that it was nothing. Then he called for every one out of the trenches. “We scrambled out, and from then on it was nothing but a steady advance under rifle, ma- chine gun and artillery fire. We certainly had the Boches on the run, but at the same time they were pouring the lcad at us. We would dash forward 25 or 50 meters, and then, when the firc got tco hot, would drop to the ground Harmon Hall, and Nelson Larsen had his jaw shot away. The remnants of the 3d Regiment, which had lost heavily in the Somme trenches during the Winter and Spring of 1914-15, were put with what remained of the 1st Regiment, to build that unit up to a strength of two battalions. The 3d Regiment was recruited largely among foreigners who had been permanent residents of Paris, together with a certain number of volunteers from South America and the United States. Among the Americans were Victor Chapman of New York, Alvan F. Sanborn of Boston, a graduate of Amherst College in the class of 1887 and dean of the American vol- unteers of 1914; William E. Dugan, jr., of Rochester, N. Y.; Robert Mulhauser of Cleve- land; John G. Hopper of San Francisco; George Preston Ames of Baltimore, Md., and others. Henry Weston Farnsworth of Boston, Edmond Charles Clinton Genet of Ossining-on-Hudson, Joseph Lydon of Salem, Mass., and Dr. David E. Wheeler of Buffalo, N. Y., joined the regi- ment early in 1915. IN July, 1915, the 1st Regiment found itself in Alsace, alongside the 2d Regiment. ‘The “American Volunteers’ Corps,” formed in Paris early in August, 1914, had gone into the latter regiment; among the American volunteers were Alan Seeger of New York, John Jacob Casey and Charles Hofiecker of San Francisco, David King of Providence, R, I.; Fred Landreaux and Edgar J. Bouligney of New Orleans, Rupert Van Vorst of Cincinnati, Charles Sweeney of Seattle, Wash.} Jules James Bach of St. Louis, Mo.; James Stewart Carstairs of Philadelphia, Pa.; William Thaw of Pittsburgh, Pa., and others. Thaw had attempted first to enter the French Army aviation, and when he was re- fused enlisted as a Legionnaire; he succeeded in transferring to the aviation in December, 1914, and became the founder of the famous Escadrille Lafayette. Guy H. Azostini of San Francisco, John Bowe of Canby, Minn., and Wilfred Michaud of Detroit, Mich, joined the 2d Regiment at the front in the Spring of 1915. The first American citizen killed in the World War, Edward Mandell Stone, met his death in the trenches near Craonnelle with the 2d Regiment. He was mortally wounded by shrapnel on February 15, 1915, and died 12 days later in a hospital at Fismes. Less than two weeks after his death, Rene Phelizot of Chicago was fatally injured in a fight with three veteran Legionnaires who had made dis- paraging remarks about the American volun- teers. The two regiments of the Foreign Legion re- mained in the calm Alsace sector from July, 1915, until mid-September, then moved up into Champagne, where a great assault was being prepared. The French Army had reached its peak in strength. Bombardment of the German lines began at dawn of September 22 and continued without pause for three days and nights. The grand assault was launched in a driving rain, at 9:1& on the morning of September 25. The 2d Foreign Regiment joined the second wave of Continued on Seventeenth Page Louis Philippe, organizer of the Foreign Legion in 1831. Following his own._ seizure of the state, Louis determined to ™ make use of the many refugees in France and sent them to conquer Algiers. —