From France in his last letter home he wrote,—“If anything happens to me you may be sure that I was on my way to victory for these troops may have been demolished, but never beaten.
He preferred to become a Petit Zephyr de la Legion Etrangere and to sleep, like the birds, under the open sky, surrounded by congenial comrades, exchanging horizons with each season.
J. S. Carstairs, a Harvard graduate, was a member of the Foreign Legion.
Geo. W. Ganson put in the first winter in the trenches with the Foreign Legion. He was a Harvard graduate whose ministerial manner did not prevent the mud from hanging to his clothes, nor the whiskers on his face. He was mustered out and went back to America, but he returned to France in 1917 and went into the artillery service.
Robert Pellissier, a Harvard graduate, became a sergeant in Chasseur Alpins. He was killed on the Somme, August 29, 1916.
Henry Augustus Coit, a Harvard man, died of injuries received at the front, August 7, 1916.
Robert L. Culbert, New York City, was killed in action in Belgium.
Albert N. Depew, an American youth, wears his Veterans of Foreign Wars badge beside his Croix de Guerre. He has been a gunner and chief petty officer in the United States navy, a member of the Foreign Legion, also captain of a gun turret on the French battle ship Cassard. After his honorable discharge from the American navy, he entered French service, was transferred to the Legion, fought on the west front, and participated in the spectacular Gallipoli campaign, was captured on the steamship Georgic by the Moewe, a German commerce raider, and spent months of torture in a German prison camp. He has written a book, “Gunner Depew”; and is at present on a speechmaking tour of America.
Demetire, St. Louis, Mo., soldier of the Legion, killed four Germans,—two with grenades, two with rifle, in an outpost engagement the night previous to the attack of April 17, 1917. Going over the top the following day, he was killed.
Henry Beech Needham, American journalist, was killed near Paris, 1915, while making a trial flight with Lieutenant Warneford, who was the first man to, alone, bring down a Zeppelin machine.