“Then I demand to be treated as one.”
“What do you want now?”
“Permission to go to England.”
He got it.
He became an expert in his line. He used to take his old friends up in the air, ask them if they had been to confession, or had said their prayers, then turn a double somersault, finish with an Egyptian side wiggle and land his victims, gasping for breath. On June 15, 1917, he had aloft an American ambulance man, who was killed by the process. Chatcoff, himself, was sent to the hospital for repairs.
Kroegh was in the Legion the first year. He went down with the boys to the Fourth of July wake in Paris. Then he went to Norway, when he organized and brought back a detachment of Norwegian Ski-runners, who hauled provisions and wounded men over the snow-clad hills of the Vosges in the winter of 1915-1916.
Eugene Jacobs, from Pawtucket, Rhode Island, went from the Legion to the 170th, where he became one of the best liked sergeants. He was decorated with the Croix de Guerre for bravery. A butcher by trade, he now carries a carving knife on the end of his rifle.
Barriere was killed at la Cote. His little brother, Pierre, 15 years old, who had come from America to be as near him as possible, was working at the American Express Company’s office at the Rue d’Opera, Paris, when the bad news came. He quit his good situation, stopped correspondence with all friends, and lived through his grief silently and alone, like the little man he is.
John Laurent, a quiet, gentlemanly man, was in the Legion till October 12th, 1915, when he changed into the 170th. An actor in civil life, he became a real, living actor in the most stupendous drama ever staged. He plays his part to perfection.
Collins, writer and journalist, passed the first year of the war in the trenches of France. Evacuated for inspection, the next we heard of him was from the Balkans. Wounded, he turned up in Paris for convalescence. Then, back to the French front. He became such a truthful and realistic writer, through actual experience, that the censor cut out the half of the last article he wrote to the New York Herald; and the public hears from him no more.