HOW MLLE. DUCLOS WON THE LEGION OF HONOR
Story of a Woman Who Drove Her Auto at
Full Speed into a German Force
Told by an Eye-Witness
I—DECORATED BY MARSHAL JOFFRE
Paris, Sept. 24.
The two most romantic and brilliant features of the war, the two things that have relieved it from being a dull record of close-range slaughter, have been the use of flying machines and automobiles.
Flying machines may appear more romantic and spectacular to the outsider, but those who have seen the war at close quarters are of the opinion that the most astonishing and brilliant feats of arms have been performed by motor cars.
The experience of Mlle. Helene Duclos, who annihilated practically a whole German company with her automobile, is one of the many amazing instances of the use of this comparatively novel instrument of war. Other cases in the various warring countries have, perhaps, been equally remarkable, but hers necessarily gains added interest from the fact that she is a woman, and a very attractive one.
It has been shown that a high-powered armored motor car, running at sixty miles an hour, can, under certain conditions, disorganize a whole army and slaughter scores of soldiers. If driven into a body of men in close formation and taken by surprise its powers of injury are unlimited.
Armored cars have been used for the terribly difficult work of removing barbed wire entanglements. The car runs up to the entanglements, throws grapnel irons over them, and then backs away to uproot them. The armored car can do this work under a fire that exposed men could not live in.
Armored cars are employed in coöperation with flying machines. The aviator brings information where a car can do most damage, and then hovers overhead, giving warning to the motormen when they must retire or, return for help if necessary. An armored car crew connected with the British Naval Flying Corps has received honorable mention for annihilating a whole party of Uhlans.
Some armored cars carry two machine guns and others a gun of larger calibre.
Mlle. Duclos's motor exploit has made her the great heroine of the moment. She has been decorated by General Joffre with the cross of the Legion of Honor for her brilliant and heroic act.
II—MLLE. DUCLOS TELLS HER STORY
"I was determined to do something for my country in the fighting field, something that the Germans would remember—something more than soothing the fevered brow," said Mlle. Duclos, describing her exploits. "My great-grandfather was a captain of grenadiers under Napoleon, and the blood of generations of soldiers runs in my veins.
"My first ambition was to enlist in the fighting automobile service. I had been used to running all kinds of cars since my childhood, and was as fit for this work as any human being could be. But I found the authorities obdurate. They simply would not let a woman into the combatant services. I tried disguising myself as a man, but the rigid physical examination made this attempt useless.
"Finally it seemed to me that the only way of reaching the front was to join a volunteer motor ambulance corps, as several other women had done. I transformed a 60-horsepower, eight-seated touring car into a motor ambulance for four badly wounded men or eight slightly wounded ones. I qualified for the service and was authorized to proceed to the front in Alsace, accompanied by a mechanician.
"While performing my ambulance duties I had a good opportunity to watch the armored automobiles, and realized that their work was the most exciting and perhaps the most decisive of the war."
One day Mlle. Duclos, having taken some wounded men to the field hospital, was returning once more to the fighting line. Eager for adventure she drove her car up a mountain road, which was not included in the trench zone, and entered a wild, mountainous country, from which the French were desperately trying to drive the Germans by flank attacks, surprises, air raids and other stratagems.
Soon the rattle of rifle bullets and machine gun fire close at hand caught her attention. A turn in the road brought her in sight of a big armored French car that stood disabled in the middle of the road. The engine had been smashed by a shell. The Germans were firing at it from cover some distance away. The French soldiers were firing away from the protection of the armor with their machine guns and their rifles, but they were handicapped by the immobility of the car, and the Germans were gradually encircling them. Three of the eight Frenchmen forming the crew of the car lay dead in the road, killed while they had exposed themselves in an attempt to repair the engine.
Mlle. Duclos saw three German soldiers rise from cover and advance in an effort to rush the car. They were shot down, but she saw that in a few more minutes the Frenchmen must be overwhelmed.
Taking in the situation at a glance, the experienced motorist sped up to the injured car and backed up her machine before she stopped.
"Get in," she cried to the French soldiers, "or you will be taken in another minute."
The five Frenchmen jumped into Mlle. Duclos's car with their rifles. Under a rain of bullets she sped back by the way she had come. Luckily they all escaped, and a turn in the zigzag road soon put them out of danger.
The Germans must have taken possession of the car in a leisurely manner after the escape of the French. It was precious booty to them. Probably they tried to repair it, and, finding that impossible, started to tow it back.
The Frenchmen were not satisfied to escape with their lives and leave their car behind. Mlle. Duclos had noted carefully the direction of the surrounding roads. After running back a short distance she found a road that would lead them to the one that the Germans would follow on their way back.
The French officer in charge of the party insisted on taking the steering wheel of the car, but Mlle. Duclos demonstrated that she was the only one who could get the best speed out of her car. Thus she forced them to let her stay in the place of danger.
Behind a pile of rocks that marked the meeting of the roads they lay in wait for the returning Germans.
Up the road came the Germans tugging at a rope that drew the great disabled French armored car. There were about forty of them, practically half a company, minus the men who had already fallen in the fight.
It was impossible for the five Frenchmen to cope with them in any ordinary fight. Only surprise and stratagem could hope to meet the situation.
III—SHE PLUNGES HER MOTOR INTO THE GERMANS
Mlle. Duclos immediately suggested that she should drive the car straight down on the unsuspecting Germans. Her opportunity for a great action had come. She seized it.
Down hill upon the toiling Germans flew the great 60-horsepower car. Straight as an arrow it went, with the weight of its two tons multiplied a hundred times by its speed and downward course.
All the Germans in its full path went down like ripe corn before the scythe. Straight it flew on without being swerved in the slightest degree by the human obstacles in its way.
Severed heads flew up in the air and arms and legs were chopped off by the flying car. Ghastly fragments of flesh and bone, a muddy mixture of blood and viscera, human remains that had nothing human about them, spattered the wheels and the body and all the occupants of the car.
"I felt like the very incarnation of the spirit of destruction and revenge," says Mlle. Duclos describing this wild scene. "I was not human."
The car flew on its path of death until it reached the captured French armored car. Mlle. Duclos missed this by an incalculable fraction of an inch and then slowly brought her racing car to a stop.
The French soldiers looked back. Only a few German soldiers, who were out of the path of the auto, had escaped death or maiming. Perhaps there were six in all, and they were aghast at the demon of death that had swept through them.
The French soldiers showered the Germans with hand grenades and would probably have overcome the rest of the party and recaptured their auto, when a party of Uhlans was seen riding up the road from the direction of the German lines.
It appeared that scouting aviators of both sides had witnessed the fight over the armored car and had carried word back to their respective forces.
Once more the gallant French motor fighters were in danger of being wiped out. Acting in co-operation with the officer, Mlle. Duclos ran her car back again, putting it between the survivors of the first German party and the new reinforcements. This move put the former at a great disadvantage, as they were standing about in a flat, open place, but, of course, it exposed the Frenchmen to the newly arriving German forces.
The Frenchmen with rifles and pistols disposed of the remnant of the first German party, and then started to hitch their disabled car to Madame Durand's machine.
A shower of bullets from the German side warned them that their gallant efforts would probably be in vain.
"Whir-r-r! whir-r-r!" came the frightful scream of war cars from the direction of the French lines.
Two powerful French armored cars sped down the road, with machine guns spouting death, and engaged the German reinforcements.
At the conclusion of this new battle the five French motor fighters were able to secure their disabled car, and Mlle. Duclos at the wheel of her own car led the glorious wreck back in triumph.
Thus it happened that she received the military cross of the Legion of Honor and is the heroine of the hour.—(New York American.)