George Marquet, New York, three times wounded—the last time on July 1, 1916, at Hill 304, near Verdun. This company, the 8th of the 6th Regt. of the Line, while defending the hill against continued Boche attacks, out of 200 men had only one sergeant and twenty-four men at the close of that memorable day.
Jack Noe, Glendale, L. I., Foreign Legion, was wounded in the attack near Rheims in the spring of 1917, and captured in the general mix-up. He escaped and made his way back to the French lines.
R. Hard, Rosebank, Staten Island, New York, having only one eye, went into the gas manufacturing works, and commenced to fill gas shells with a bicycle pump. Gradually, the business developed till ten men could turn out 1,875 shells every ten hours. A thin, wiry man, the gas fumes affected his heart. Stout men get the poison in the lungs.
Henry La Grange went to France at the outbreak of war and was ordered to the Foreign Legion: “No,” he said, “I want to go to my grandfather’s regiment, the 8th. If I can’t join that I will not go at all.” His great-grandfather had fought in Egypt. The grandson, following the old man’s footsteps, rose to the rank of sergeant. He was decorated with the Croix de Guerre and, later, detailed to America to instruct the growing army in artillery observation.
Mjojlo Milkovich, of San Francisco, Cal., a professional boxer, left the Golden West with $6,000 in his pocket and an elaborate wardrobe. He was torpedoed in the “Brindisti” and, after five hours in the water, reached shore, naked as the day he was born. At Corfu, Greece, he joined the French Army, was wounded on the Bulgarian front and tended in the Scottish Woman’s Hospital at Salonica. After his recovery he went direct to the front, and, again severely wounded, was sent to France. At quarters one day he accosted me:
“What, you understand English?” “Yes.”
“Are you an American?”
“Yes.”
“So am I,—can’t speak a word of French.”
The three main cords of his leg were severed by shell splinters. He chafed at the slow hospital life, and, every second day, he pounded the doctors on the back.