MEET TOMMY, D. C. MEDAL MAN
IF war is not a great leveler—and we have been told numberless times that it is—it is certainly the Great American Mixer, and Camp Upton, L. I., is probably the best example extant thereof, so to speak. The Bowery boy and the millionaire rub elbows—you have probably heard that before, but it is nevertheless true—and the owners of Long Island show places sleep in cots next to their former gardeners. But probably the most interesting character at Camp Upton is the barber who was at one time a sergeant in the British Flying Corps, and wears the King’s Distinguished Conduct Medal—that is, he probably would wear it if he hadn’t left it at “’ome in a box.” The New York Sun says:
Down on the muster pay roll the D. C. medal man is Harry Booton, but over in the 304th Field Artillery’s headquarters company barracks they call him Ben Welch, the Jewish comedian. But for all that his real name is Ortheris, who even Kipling himself thought had lain dead these twenty years and more in the hill country of India. And for the brand of service for his reincarnation he has chosen the artillery—the bloomin’, bloody artillery that he used to hate so much when he and Mulvaney were wearing the infantry uniform of the little old Widow of Windsor.
London cockney he was then, a quarter of a century ago, and London cockney he is today. And if there be some who say his name is not really Ortheris, let it be stated that names are of small moment after all. It’s the heart that counts—and the heart of this under-sized little Jewish cockney is the heart of Kipling’s hero—and the soul is his and the tale is his. And instead of telling his yarn to Mulvaney he now tells it to an Italian barber they call Eddie rather than his own gentle name of Gasualdi.
From Headquarters Hill, where the Old Man With the Two Stars looks out and down on his great melting-pot that’s cooking up this stirring army of freedom, you walk a half mile or so west until you stumble on Rookie Roose J 18, where the headquarters company and the band of the 304th Field Artillery play and sing and sleep and work. In one corner of the low, black-walled washroom nestling next the big pine barracks, Eddie the Barber lathers, shaves, and clips hair for I. O. U.’s when he isn’t busy soldiering. And into Eddie’s ears come stories of girls back home and yarns of mighty drinking bouts of other days, and even tales of strange lands and wars and cabbages and kings. Eddie is the confidant of headquarters company.
If you stand around on one foot and then another long enough, and add a bit now and then to the gaiety of the nations represented in Eddie’s home concocted tonsorial parlor you’ll hear some of these wild yarns pass uninterrupted from the right to the left ear of Eddie. And if you’re lucky you may even hear the tale of the D. C. medal—and the five wounds, and the torpedoed bark, and the time the King’s hand was kissed, and all from the lips of Ortheris, alias Harry C. Booton, alias Ben Welch.
And so, if you will kindly make way for the hero, whose medal is “at ’ome in me box,”—but who did not forget to bring his cockney accent along, to which he has added a dash of the Bowery—you may listen to the tale that was told to the Sun man:
“I was boined down in Whitechapel, Lunnon, and me ole man died seventeen years ago in the Boer War,” the tongue of Harry began his tale: “’E was a soger under ‘Mackey’ McKenzie, and ’e was kilt over in Sout Africey. Well, when Hingland goes into this war I says to meself I’ll join out to an’ do me bit, an’ so I done wit’ the Lunnon Fusileers, and after two or three months trainin’ we was sint to Anthwerp, but we didn’t stop there very long.
“Then we fights in the battle of Mons and Lille—I don’t know how you spells that Lille, but I think it’s ‘L-i-l’—or somethin’ loik that. Well, in the battle of Mons I gets blowed up. Funny about that. You see, a Jack Johnson comes along and buries me, all except me bloomin’ feet, and then I gets plugged through both legs with a rifle bullet and I’m in the hospital for a month. When I gets out I’m transferred to the Royal Flying Corps and I goes to the Hendon or sumthin’ loike that aereodrome up Mill Hill way, fur trainin’. You see, I was a stige electrician in the Yiddish teaters on the Edgware road, and knowin’ things like that I was mide a helper and learnt all about flying machines.”
The b-r-r-r-r-r of an airplane—the first one to fly over the camp—caused Henry’s ear to cock for a second and then a smile to pop out of his face.
“’Ere’s one of the bloomin’ things now,” he went on. “Well, I was made a sergeant an’ arfter a bad bomin’ of Lunnon by the Fritzes six of us machines was sent to pay compliments to the Germans.
“It was dark and cold and nasty when we started out to attack Frederickshaven and give ’em some of their own medicine.
“Three hundred miles we flies an’ I’d dropped eighteen of my nineteen bums—you see I was riding with Sergeant-Major Flemming—when they opens up on us with their antiguns and five of us flops down, blazin’ and tumblin’. Then somethin’ hits me back and somethin’ else stings me arm and then I felt her wabble and flop. I glances behind and my sergeant is half fallin’ out and just as he tumbled I mikes a grab for ’im. ’E was right behint me and so as to right the machine I grips him with me teeth in his leather breetches and then I throws ’im back and swings into his seat and tramps on the pedal for rising. Up we goes to 9,000 feet, but it was too bloomin’ cold up there, so I come down some and points back for Hingland.
“The sergeant ’e were there with me, and I was glad efen if ’e had been kilt dead. You wouldn’t want ’im back there with them Booches—’im my pal and my sergeant. I wasn’t going to let the Booches have ’im.
“More’n 300 miles I had to fly—6 degrees it were—when I caught Queensborough, and then I come down. Funny about that—just as soon as I ’it the ground I fainted loike a bloomin’ lidy.
“An’ I was up in a Hinglish ’ospital in Lunnon when I come to a couple of d’ys after. An’ I wykes a bloomin’ ’ero, and the King ’e sends for me an’ some other ’eroes, and we all goes to Buckingham Palace, and ’is Majesty the King and Queen Mary and a ole bloomin’ mess of them bloomin’ dooks and lydies comes and the King pins the medal on me. Me a ’ero with a D. C. medal. And now I’m warin’ this bloomin’ kiki-ki and hopin’ to get another crack at Kaiser Bill and Fritz the sauerkraut.”
The ’ero was finally invalided out of service and ordered to the munitions factories in northern England. Having no inclination for this work, he stowed away on the Swedish bark Arendale, which was torpedoed when fifteen days out from London. He was picked up by the Dutch steamship Leander and finally landed in New Orleans. The Sun continues:
Then Harry came to New York a little over a year ago and made his abode at 157 Rivington street. By day he worked in a A-Z Motion Picture Supply Company, 72 Hester street, and by night he told brave tales of war and sang snatches of opera that he had learned behind the scenes in London.
Then came America’s entrance into the Great War and the selective service examination. At Board 109 Harry demanded that although he was a British subject he be allowed to go. And after considerable scratching of heads the members of Board 109 decided to ship Harry to Camp Upton with the first increment on September 10, and what was more, to make him the squad leader on the trip.
“Salute me, ya bloomin’ woodchopper,” Harry, ex-Tommy Atkins, shouted in derision at some lowly private who ventured to try a light remark. “Hain’t I yer superior? Hain’t I actin’ corporal? Hain’t I goin’ to be a sergeant-major? Awsk me—hain’t I?”
And the answer was decidedly and emphatically yes. And power to ye, Harry Booton—medal or no medal.