The evening world. Newspaper, May 29, 1918, Page 11

a WEDNESDAY, MAY 29, 1918 there. man bodies. it. I don’t believe they ‘The second night we were donned, and action in the morning again around 10 o'clock the wire in front of our on the line. It kept up pared them to gutters. $uld, despite the trees. down like ten-pins yet. about it: } ‘ + woods sector. other “killed in action.” k by troops “minnie,” en out alive. As far as I know, started singing through ir And we figured they were “duds,”| it is, shells that failed to explode. Noticed more than 50 per cent shem seemed like “duds.” son was the first one to iw ifprently. 1 remember him stand- on a fire step, swinging his re- yer around, and yelling at a gas , “Turn on that horn, turn it Quick.” The horn blared out, em on for almost an hour. wpposed “duds” were gas be attack, as far as we were con- ned, failed, but K Company, left, had one man gassed P Company I was not in it the first) ime the German thought he’ me lover, but another portion of the wag, And that is the time the orn | ne on th tuek true to its old fighting name. There had been some artillery | It quieted down and then started to unne too, until our front trenches looked jana” and would gi Mie so many broken ditches nig through the woods. ! Aiken, the intelligence officer, com-| shooters started pegging a Just as dawn was cracking morning our watchmen yelled| our pest shot. I wonder how many put that the Germans were coming Atbarrage was laid down wire again and then moved up to) pany jn the trenches, the time be our lines. We had been but chanced the shells, for we} fe pretty sure the Boche would e@ over. And he came. waves of the gray clad fig- umes were coming through woods when we saw them preserved their line as well as they |all ready if the German does deci the men walked shoulder to shoul der, There was no rush, no hurry, and no sound but that constant erash of shells hitting around us. ‘We had a few machine guns in pperation and started after them. 1 can hear those guns clattering yet, gan ceo those gray ranks tumbling the artillery ald we had asked caught theta about sixty yards from our Mme, With each explosion Germans would go hurtling through the air. “That for you,damn you!” the Irish- ‘meé were yelling. And it was for tham. They never did get over and ty few ever did get back few days later the Paris edition of an American paper had this “¥ntense artillery activity in the While 1 Company suffered no at- yet it underwent as as four gas attacks in a night woods were too thick ud gas on us, so the Germans d-aend ove; either mustard oF|morality. Take the figures in our Four Months in France _ With the 165th Infantry _ (The Old “‘Sixty- -Ninth’’) 7 er Bombardment— Casualties and Gas Shells A German “Wave Attack’ That Failed—Collapse of a Dugout— Tricks to Make Our Troops ‘‘Nervous’’— Morale and Morals. FOURTH INSTALMENT. [ By George H. Benz | Former First Lieutenant, Company I | Written Exclusively for The ight, 1918, by Tho Press Publishing Co, (The New York I UR sector was mighty quiet the first day up. We learned that E Company had lost a few men, especially of the mess gang. They | had been caught when shrapnel burst around the kitchen ‘The next day I Company, on our right, caught {t. We had been mak- iS @ reconnaissance of position and were down in their sector, Lieut. | ; Norman and a score of his men were in a dugout. It was about twenty feet deep and the entrance was down | a gangway from the front line. Evid plane had spotted it, for it wasn’t long howled through the air and registered a direct hit on the top of the dugout. It pounded in the entrance, but | we could hear the men singing and whistling down | They said no one had been hurt severely. A working party was put on the job and they had Lieut Norman almost out, when along comes another makes another direct hit, and for a while all you could see was flying timbers, dirt and bits of | ‘The last shell collapsed the dugout, and few men were that is the grave of some of the men were ever taken out. Any time a working party ould go near they'd be shelled and forced ening World ening World.) | ly an enemy ‘ore “minnie” > retire. tear gas in shells, And speaking of gas attacks, Lieut. George Pattin of} the Medical Corps proved himself so | |much the hero in one that he was | decorated with the Croix de Guerre. | We had been s lied twice before | during that evening, and no one had been caught. Then the third round came over, and some of the men| were slow in getting on the masks. | They got it tn thelr lungs and “went Lieut. Pattin was treating n, but found his mask interfered with his work. Unmindful of his P} own danger, he tore off his mask and went back to work, He worked until the gas fumes put him out of com- mission. Dr. Pattin is from New York too. The hardest job an American of- ficer has 1s to keep his men from going over and attacking the Ger- r own accc The first few nights we were up the Germans, evidently learning new troops d them, tried all night ve them, They started fir ing off rockets about 9 o'clock, send Jong the shells were pounding on/ing up green ones and red ones, and then strings of lights. Later they would crawl out into “no man’ nt to weird v cries, like a tortured babe, or a wom- Al an in mortal fear. After a few sharp. yin the we didn't have et. Quin was direction of the no uch more trouble. $ notches he has in his gun now Here {s the routine for com ing for a twenty-four hour period Let us start half an hour before daylight and half an hour after.) During that time “stand to” is held,! that {s, every man takes his posit! to come over. After the artillery jhas exchanged shells of hate the men }loll around in the trenches until one hears a burst of profanity mixed in with Irish brogue that comes in the rear. That is the mess gang coming, up, with Joe Holohan, probably, cuss-| ing out some one for making a noise | and endangering the grub of the rest Mess over, a few men are left on watch and the rest go to sleep; that] {3, if they successfully can in that trying to clean up their dug-outs. and the rest giving their fect an air- ing. It is an order that they must do this every day to prevent trench | fect | noon, probably one squad or two| My company was in the line etght| Jays. I left on the seventh day, as! ny orders gave me no alternative. | And when I loft I wept, because T! was leaving some of the finest men| f! was standing in tho trench of] Goq aver created. They were another company's sector with a private near me, I don't know who he was. A_ shell Inrough the air and a moment later bufst near us. I looked o thd. private. All I saw white,” | | ‘land one who knows men does not | have to be told what “white” means. ound f0r!the slurs some one, misinformed 4| probably, had been heaping on the| wrecked trench, on the side of which | fost body of men in the world. They | a boot-—all that was left of) said they drank to excess and spent nother true son of the 69th mew his name. He was just an-| |most of their time with women—ovil women. That is untrue. I was “over there” seven months. IT saw thousands, yes, several hun- dreds of thousands of our men. Out of that number I saw but two I'd call drunk. So much for that Then take the other charge. Im The Strange War Romance of ¢ a New York Skirt Model ' THREE CHAPTERS IN THE SWIFTLY MOVING CAREER OF MARGOT PERKINS, WHO MARRIED, A TITLE, AND NOW BELIEVES SHE’S REINCARNATION OF JOAN OF ARC. Was Margot Perkins, a skirt model in New York less than two years ago: Lia § Countres>, o& RG ore FES Married Count William de Fersen, formerly an attache of Legation in Washington +; any, “t. joey ai Boats Sailed to France and begged French Authorities to let her lead armies to victory as reincarnated Joan of Ave No. 10 in Black Book and Other Sad Tunes All of America’s Wedding Airs Are hase: but if They Are Too Kaiserish for Patriotic Brides There Are Lots of Star Spangled American Tunes as Full of Eagle Screams as a Subway Train Is of Harlemites—The Cow- Step to Hoola-Hoola Up the boy’s Lament Would Make a Neat Jazz BY ARTHUR (“BUGS”) It's like giving a sick cow medicine Publishing Co, to make her sicker instead cf punished. instead of sewing on 10 per ce John Philip Sousa bas been asked to compose j WO BELLS med din, They come out for dinner and} Ne around again most of the after. to miss his profiteers aren't two-belling the proposal From @ hat check bandits proposition 1a just as one-sided as a two-legged shit speeding up now, and it looks like they will soon be Patriotic veteran debutantes who are eleven Z class, about to drag some refuse to commit the atrocity to a German me this year’s graduating ‘em wear rubber heels and A sad showing, mates finger prints for. aduating clas into which Europe ed, eighteen of what difference If they have oleum fox trot, and the dumb dum wants to do some good, » proper moment to switch from the fork to the eating beef stew. Not satistied with junking all the railroad Presidents reared an extra 10 per cent sa guy who works in the city an And a suburb is a place where & partly country, {t has no country comforts. a graduating cl If that bunk about “Here Comes the Bride” , there are lots of good star-spangled as the subway | American tunes just packed as full of » Pardon ‘That Came McAdoo has railroad fine on all com- One of the first things I noted| T/ when I came back home, too, w as | , and the sentiment is as delicate a f America’s wedding 2 oF has no city conyenlences, America's ‘ ding airs are tmp A suburb always wears D wet married to haven't , as If the elty and country didn’t expect to seo in such bad company. “But why plaster another 10 per cent. on the poor old commuters? tunes to get @ real American ain't anything but an epitaph set to music would make @ neat but not gaudy jazz step to hoola hoola up the If you don't like those jovial spasms, just turn to d leader of the vi 4 of borrowed tobacco but it sounded like a surprised expr brides needn't about getting “The Cowboy n,| tect the folks at home on $33 a month Two out of t number were dis- end money home to their people and carry insurance to pro-4 Continued om this page Lo-morrom., 10 in the black book. WEDNESDAY, MAY 29, 1918 Is the Countess de F ersen, Who'd Lead Army of France, Reincarnated Joan of Arc? { Skirt Model in New York Only Two Years Ago, Now Wife of Descendant of Nobleman R Flanders and lead the heroic French Who Died for Love of Queen Marie Antoinette, She'd Put Her Strange Belief to the Test at Head of French Troops. By Taylor Kennerly ECENT news despatches from Paris briefly told of how the young and beautiful Countess Margot de Fersen had appealed to the French authorities to be allowed to go to the battle front in troops to victory. Some of the things that news item of only a few short paragraphs did not tell make a story that would be worthy of Kipling or even a Poe. Just a few of the things in this untold story, like in thousands of others that make Iife the one great adventure only excelled by death, are: That the talented and charming Countess de Fersen was leas than two years ago a skirt model in New York—a woman who had tasted the sweets of life and then drained the cup of bitterness; a woman who hat been forced to give up a life of luxury and soctety and earn her own living by exhibiting gowns she had once worn with the ease and grace of a queen. Nelther did it tell us that this Countess, who pleaded with the stera but patient leaders of France, the men who have the fate and fortunes of this suffering, bleeding nation fn their hands, told them she was the reincarnation of Joan of Are, and that she had travelled all the way acro#s the Atlantic to make true the dream of hundreds of dying French soldiers brave, froe hearted Blue Devils, w ho in their Jast breath on the shell- torn battlefield have told of seeing a vision. of the Maid of Orleans float- ing through the heavens. It did not tell us that before sailing for France, only @ few weeks ago, the Countess de Fersen went to Washington and laid before the High French Commission her claims of divine power. And that she pleaded with them to sanction her trip across the sca to the land where the free- dom of the world hangs in the bal- ance, as an oMfctal mission, Nothing was said about her husband, Count William de Fersen—the quiet, unas- suming nobleman who has staked bis name and fortune on the—is it only fancy of a woman? Stil there are people who laugh ‘when you tell them life is stranger ) than fiction. | But who is this former skirt model, now & member of one of the oldest Jof titled families of Europe? This |self-styled second Mald of Orleans, {who suddenly appears in France with her tale of “volees and divine power"? This almost unknown | woman whose claims so vividly recall | the true Joan of Are who, 500 or more ars ago, gathered together a bat- ltered and all but defeated arthy and | swept It on to victory—-a victory that has for centuries kept burning the light of romance and glory in the) |hearts of a wonderful, self-sacrific- | ing peopl | Let her friends tell—the people {who know her best. To them—and they are not numerous, for she made few friends—she is the “Countess of | Sorrows.” Psychic? She doesn't know, she | says, really what {t means Religious? No more than the) average New York woman, A student of theosophy? Hardly Theosophy might be theology or psychology or mythology #o far as she knows or cares. Mediumistic? Never! “All L know,” she told her friends at the Waldorf-Astoria and at No, 266 West 72d Street, the two places where she resides while In this tty, ‘1g that a divine, a strange, unex | | | | plainable power drives me on; on to this terrifying fleld of slaughter on a sacred mission of mercy that will mean the ultimate downfall of the war-mad ruler of a bloodthirsty na- tion.” And Ike her husband, friends of Countess de Fersen believe this com- paratively unknown woman if not the second Joan of Are, as she claims, is possessed of some mys- terlous divine power-—certainly not as rhe Counteaa” merely was referred to by some of the French offictals at Washington whom he visited beforo leaving for her voyare across the ocean © is not Ike other people," they will tell you. “There is some thing about Ner—something we can't understand, but a force that we in her presence that compels the | greatest respect and reverence—a \power that makes you want to be- lieve everything she says, no mat ter how weird or unreasonable {t| may m.”" But Sorrows" during her stay in the | United States—a: he had become |a Countess—had enemies as well as | friends, people who belleved she was Jan impostor and a fraud. It was | soon after her visit to the office of Col. Collardet, French Attache Mil- itare at the National Capital, that ed the visit of the oe “Countess of Voices and one rep Col s and the alma she had f arles De Woody of eal anch of the Department of t Sustioa ‘ In this day of war ond spies—a time when even a man may be sus- pictous of his own btother—no time was lost by the Department of Jus- tice in putting two of its best men to work to find out “who and what” this lady of mystery really wa, For days and weeks before she finally sailed a secret service man shadowed both Count de Fersen and the Countess, closely watching every step that either made. But not @ move could be in the least oMcially questioned. The day the stately Countess and her husband went aboard the big liner that was to take them to France an agent of the Government, who stood on the wharf and «aw tyem depart, turned and remarked to a friend: “You know, Joan of Arc at first was also accused of being crazy.” When ho made pis report to Washington there was gothing.in it that could in any way connect either the Count or’ the “Lady of the Voices” as being unfriendly to the United States. It was, as far as the secret service men could report, only another case of a long and fruitless spy hunt. But such cases are not unusual now, and if the files Jot Chtet De Woody could be in- spected they would reveal the names of more than two persons of noble birth, or people of titled }families through marriage, who had Itallen under the scrutinizing eye of {this alert Government official—peo- ple who had been investigated, but | where the investigations had come to naught At the time no part of this inves- tigation was made public, and nel- ther has it yet been given out by the Department of Justice officials. It was the friends of the Count and Countess who talked when they read of her safe arrival in France. New York and New Yorkers soon forget things and people. But not the “Countess of Sorrows.” When they read of her appeal to the French authorities for a chance to lead their armies to a glorious vic- tory in this war for Freedom and Democracy they began to talk. They not only talked of how Mar- got Perkins, divorced from her first husband, and the mother of two child came from Canada to gay, giddy Gotham two years ago, went to work as a model, and then, in a a aia real Count, They talked of other gs that recalled the days of the reign of Queen Marle Antoinette, whose love for pleasure and contempt for rigid court etiquette make one of tte s of the ro |mantic history of Fr and Swe- Iden, It was then they remembered— what they did not remember their history told them—that the Jname of the soldier and statesman whose love for the beautiful but in- reet young Queen caused bis death at the hands of a mob w Fersen—-Count Hans Axe! of Sweden. | Then the mystery of why the dash- ing and brilliant young Count Will- fam de Fer who first came to the United States as ap attache of the most interesting chapte wiss Leg , would stake his all on the whim of a woman, Surely he t a direct descendant of this gallant knight of old, who laughed at the wo! " ce died because he had lived in ae dream of lovel And he ig. 4 all