Death to all spies is the military rule. One of the most dramatic of the many minor tragedies of the war was seen at Lassigny recently, when a captive in a black gown, to all appearances a nun, was suddenly led before a firing squad and shot down at the officer’s command. The startled onlookers learned that the squad’s victim was a daring young lieutenant in the German army who had got inside the French lines by donning a nun’s attire. So good was his disguise that he had gone for a considerable distance and probably had obtained much information that would have proved valuable had he escaped.
Had the spy been a woman, the penalty would have been the same. Such is the law of war. Many women spies have been caught and executed.
Oldest Veteran in Southwest Section.
Probably the oldest, and surely the most noted Confederate veteran now living in the Southwest is Doctor Thomas E. Berry, of Oklahoma City, Okla., a typical “Kentucky colonel,” who is now eighty-three years old. He walks as straight as a young Indian, has never used intoxicating beverages or tobacco and has never suffered from fever or other sickness, and during his long and eventful career he has been soldier, globe trotter, author, duelist, physician, and surgeon.
In the Civil War he served with the Confederate generals, Morgan and Forest, was captured twelve times by the Yankees, and escaped that many times from their prisons. He received twenty-two bullet wounds and several saber cuts during the four years of fighting, and since the close of the war has fought six duels in foreign lands.
Doctor Berry served under Joe Shelby in Mexico and helped to organize the French army in Algeria. He rendered valuable service to King Menelik in Abyssinia and sojourned for a while in Constantinople, where, like many others, he swam across the Bosporus. He received several decorations from foreign rulers, but never wears them in this “land of the free.”
In a recent chat with a friend Doctor Berry said:
“My father and grandfather admonished me to never forgive or forget an insult; never offer the left cheek after having been slapped on my right cheek. They also requested me to always keep the Berry escutcheon untarnished; never be a craven nor a coward.”
The doctor comes from a wealthy family that owned large areas of land near Perryville, Ky., but the Civil War made them comparatively poor. The doctor wrote a book entitled “Four Years With Generals Forest and Morgan.” He is now writing a book about his foreign military service.
He has also made several valuable discoveries in materia medica and surgery while practicing medicine forty years. Some of them are very original and should not be allowed to perish with the doctor’s death.