I told him of my intention. Possibly because we were in for the same kind of experience he later became communicative. He had run away from home at the age of fourteen, spent his sixteenth year in a reform school, and the rest of his time as a kind of gangster in Chicago. I can't imagine a more useless existence than the one he revealed. At length he "got sick of the crowd and got the bug to go to war," as he expressed it, and wrote to his people to tell them he was starting, but received no answer. "My father was a Bible cuss," he remarked cheerfully,—"never got over my swiping the minister's watch."
A Chicago paper had printed his picture and a "story" about his going to enlist in the Foreign Legion—"popular young man very well known in the—th ward," said the article. He showed me, too, an extraordinary letter he had received via the newspaper, a letter written in pencil on the cheapest, shabbiest sheet of ruled note-paper, and enclosing five dollars. "I hope you will try to avenge the Lusitania," it said among other things. The letter was signed by a woman.
"Do you speak French?" I asked.
"Not a word," he replied. "I want to be put with the Americans or the
Swedes. I speak good Swedish."
Months later, on furlough, I saw in a hospital at Lyons a college classmate who had served in the Foreign Legion. "Did you know a fellow named Petersen?" I asked.
"Yes, I knew him," answered my friend; "he lifted a fifty-franc note from me and got killed before I could get it back."
"How did it happen?"
"Went through my pockets, I imagine."
"Oh, no, I meant how did he get killed?" "Stray shell sailed in as we were going through a village, and caught him and two of the other boys."
"You must not make your friend talk too much," mumbled an old Sister of
Charity rather crossly.