The Yale Democrat (Yale, Okla.), Vol. 11, No. 41, Ed. 1 Monday, April 14, 1919 Page: 6 of 8
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Jllbert T)epeu)
Ex-Gunner end Chiel Petty Officer.
U. S. Nevy—Member ol the Foreign
Legion ol France — CepUin Cun
Turret, French Battlerhip Canard
Winner ol the Croii Cuartrl
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SYNOPSIS.
CHAPTER I—Albert N. Depew, author
of the Btory, enlists In the United Hlntes
nuvy, Bervlnu four yours anil uttaiinnn
Lhe rank of chief petty officer, tirst-cUss
gunner.
CHARTER II—Tho great war starts
soon alter ho 1b lionoruhly dlschurgcd
Horn the nuvy und ho Bulls for France
with u determination to enlist.
Purest Drinking Water
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Is the water from which ice is made
This water is distilled, boiled and re-
boiled, making it free from disease
germs of every kind.
Melt the Ice and Drink the Water
CANFIELD ICE COMPANY
Telephone 190
CHAPTER III—He Joins tho Foreign
Legion und Is assigned to tho dreadnought
Uussurd whore Ills marksmanship wins
him high honors.
CHAPTER IV—Depow Is detached from
ll'ilV au ““
hly whin and sent with a regiment of tho
« • . rr% a 1 _ — . _ a_ - f|C fl», .In
Ilia nmy UIIUI ravin. «x
Legion to Flunders where ho soon finds
himself In the front lino trenchoB.
The “75’s” fired 30 shots n minute,
where the best the German guns could
do was six. The American three-inch
field piece lets go six times a minute,
too. The French government owns the
secret of the mechanism that m: de
tills rapid fire possible. When the first
“7rrs" began to roar, the Germans
knew the French had found a new
weapon, so they were very anxious to
get one of the guns and learn the
secret.
Shortly afterward they captured
eight guns by n mass attack In which,
the allies claim, there were 4,000 Ger-
man troops killed. Tho Roches studied
the guns and tried to turn out pieces
like them at the Krupp factory. But
somehow they could not get It. Their
Imitation “75’s” would only fire five
shots very rapidly and then “cough”
puff, puff, puff, with nothing coming
out. The destructive power of the
“7r>’s” Is enormous. These guns have
saved the lives of thousands of poilus
ami Tommies an^ It Is largely due to
them that tho French are now able to
heat Fritz at his own game and give
buck shell for shell—and then some.
CHAPTER V.
With the “75’s."
My pnl Brown, of whom T spoke be-
fore, had been put In the infantry
when he enlisted In the Legion, be-
cause he had served In the United
States Infantry. He soon became a
sergeant, which had been Ills rating
In the American service. I never saw
him In the trenches, because our out-
fits were nowhere near each other, hut
whenever we were in billets at the
same time, we were together as much
ns possible.
Brown was n funny card and T never
saw anyone else much like him. A
big, tall, red-headed, dopey-looking fel-
low, never saying much and slow in
everything he did or said—you would
never think he amounted to much or
was worth his salt. The boys used to
call him “Ginger” Brown, both on ac-
count of his red hair and his slow
movements. But he would pull a sur-
prise on you every once In a while,
like this one that he fooled me with.
One morning about dawn we started
out for a walk through what used to
he Dlxmude—piles of Stone and brick
and mortar. There were no civvies to
be seen; only mules and horses bring-
ing up casks of water, bags of beans,
chloride of lime, burbed wire, ammu-
nition. etc. It was a good thing we
wore not superstitious. At that, the
shadows along the walls made me feel
shaky sometimes.
Finally Brown said: “Come on
down; let’s . see the *75’s.’ ” At this
time I had not seen a “75,” except on
a train going to the front, so I took
him up right away, but was surprised
that he should know where they were.
After going half way around Dlx-
inude Brown said, “Here we are,” and
started right into what was left of a
big house. I kept wondering how he
would know so much about It, but fol-
lowed him. Inside the house was a
passageway under the ruins. It was
about seven feet wide uud fifty feet
long, I should Judge.
At the other end was the groat old
‘•75,” poking Its nose out of a hole In
the wall. The gun captain and the
crew were sitting around waiting the
word for action, and they seemed to
know Brown well. I was surprised at
that, but still more so when he told
jne I could examine the gun if I
granted to, Just ns If he owned It.
So I sat In the seat and trained the
Cross wires on an oblect, opened and
Closed the breech and exnmlued the
recoil.
Then Brown said: “Well, Chink,
you’ll see some real gunnery now, and
they passed the word and took sta- ;
tlons. My eyes bulged out when I |
saw Brown tnko his station with them! 1
“Silence 1” Is about the first com- j
marnl a gun crew gets when It Is going
Into notion, hut I forgot all about It, 1
and shouted out and asked Brown how I
he got to he a gunner. But he only
grinned and looked dopey, as usual, j
Then I ciimo to and expected to get a
call down from the cT'cer, hut he only
grinned and so did the crew. It
seems they had It all framed to spring
on me, nnd they expected I would be
surprised.
So we put cotton In our ears and ;
the captain culled the observation
tower a short distance away and they
gave him the range. Then the captain
“called 4128 meters" to Brown. They
placed the nose of a shell In a fuse
adjuster and turned the handle until
It reached scale 4128. 'I his sot the
fuse to explode at the range given.
Then they slammed the shell into the
brooch, locked It shut nnd Brown sent
his best to Fritz.
The barrel slipped hack, threw out
the shell case at our feet and returned
over a cushion of grease. Then we
received the results by telephone from
the observation tower. After he had
fired twelve shots the captain said to
Brown, “You should never waste your-
self In Infantry, son.” And old dopey
Brown Just stood there and grinned.
That was Brown every time. He
knew about more things than you could
think of. He had read about gunnery
and fooled around at Dlxmude until
they let him play with the “75’s,” and
finally here he was, giving his kindest
to old Fritz with the rest of them.
I never saw a battery better con-
cealed than this one. Up on the ground
you couldn’t see the muzzle twenty
yards uwuy—and that was all there
was to see at any distance. There
was a ruined garden just outside the
gun quarters, and while the gunners
were there picking apples there would
he a hiss and an explosion, nnd over
would go some of the trees, or mnybe
a man or two, but never a shell struck
nearer the guns than that. The poilus
used to thank Fritz for helping them
pick the apples, becuuse the explosions
would bring them down In great style.
Shells from our heavy artillery passed
just over the garden, too, making an
awful racket. But they were not in it
with the “75’s.”
They gave me a little practice with
a “75” under the direction of expert
French gunners before I went to my
14-lnch naval gun, nnd, believe me, It
was a fine little piece. Just picture
to yourself a little beauty that cun
Send a 38-pound shell every two sec- j
onds for five miles und more, if you
want It to, and land on h rltz vest
button every time. There Is nothing |
I like better thnn a gun, anyway, nnd
I have never since been entirely satis-
fied with nnything less than a “75."
As you probably know, the opposing
artillery In this war Is so widely sepu- ,
rated that the gunners never see their J
targets unless these hnppen to be j
buildings, and even then it is rare. So,
since an artillery officer never sees the
! enemy artillery or infantry, he must
depend on others to give him the range
| and direction.
j For this purpose there are balloons
and airplanes attached to each artil-
lery unit. The airplanes are equipped
with wireless, but also signal by
smoke nnd direction of flight, while
the bnlloons use telephones. The ob-
servers have maps and powerful
glasses and cameras. Their maps are
marked off In zones to correspond with
the maps used by the artillery officers.
The observations are signaled to a
receiving station on the ground anil
then telephoned to the batteries.
are
All our troops were equipped with
telephone signal corps detachments
and this was a very important arm
of the service. The enemy position is
shelled before an attack, either en
barrage or otherwise, and communica-
tion between the waves of attack and
the artillery Is absolutely necessary.
Bombardments are directed toward
certain parts of the enemy position
almost as accurately as you would use
n searchlight. The field telephones are
very light and are portable to the last
degree. They can be rigged up or
knocked down in a very short; time.
The wire Is wound on drums or reels
nnd you would be surprised to see how
quickly our corps established com-
munication from a newly won trench
to headquarters, for instance. They
were asking for our casualties before
we had finished having them, almost
Artillery fire wns directed by men
whose duty it was to dope out the
range from the Information sent them
by the observers in the air. Two men
were stationed at the switchboard,
one man to receive the message and
the other to operate the board. As
soon as the range was plotted out it
wns telephoned to the gunners and
they did the rest.
The naval guns at Dixmude were
mounted on flat cars and these weie
drawn hack and forth on the track by
little Belgian engines.
After I had been at my gun for sev-
eral days I was ordered buck to my i
regiment, which was ugain in the
front-line trenches. My course was ,
oust both the Lruish and French lln.s
but quite a distance behind the front
lines.
Everywhere there were ambulances
and wagons going backward and for-
ward. I met one French ambulanc e
that was a long wagon full of poilus
from a field hospital near the firing
line and was driven by a man whos.3
left arm was banduged to the shoul-
der. Two poilus who sat In the real
on guard had each been wounded In
the leg and one had had a big strip o',
his scalp torn off. There was not a
sound man in the bunch. You can
Imagine what their cargo was like, if
the convoy was as used up as these
chaps. But all who could were sing-
ing and talking and full of pep. That
Is the French for you: they used no
more men than they could possibly
spare to take care of the wounded, but
they were all cheerful about it
always.
Just after I passed this ambulance
the Germans began shelling a section
of the road too near me to be comfort-
able, so I heat it to a shell crater
about twenty yards off the road, to the
reur. A shrapnel shell exploded pretty
•near me Just as I Jumped Into this
hole—I did not look around to see how
close it was—and I remember now
how the old minstrel Joke I had hearu
on board ship came to my mind at the
time—something about a fellow feel-
ing so small he climbed Into a holo
and pulled It after him—and I wished
[ might do the same. I flattened rnj
self as close against the wall of the
-rater us I could and then I noticed
that somebody had made a dugout 1:.
the other wall of the crater and I
started for It.
The shells were exploding so fast
by that time that you could not listen
for each explosion separately, and just
as I jumped Into the dugout a regular
1ft
w
A Regular Hail of Shrapnel Fell.
sitmBzmmmz
Easter Tog
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hall of shrapnel fell on the spot I had
just passed. It was pretty dark In
the dugout nnd the first move I made
I bumped Into somebody else and he
’ let out a yell that you could have
3 heard a mile. It was a Tommy who
I hud been wounded In the hand and
\ between curses he told me I had sat
it! right on his wound when I moved. I
asked him why he did not yell sooner,
but he only swore more. He surely
was a great cusser.
The bombardment slackened up a
bit ubout this time, and I thought 1
would have a look around. I did not
get out of the crater entirely, but
moved around out of the dugout until
I could see the roud I hud been on.
The first thing I suw was a broken-
down wagon that had just been hit—
in fact, it was toppling over when my
eye caught it. The driver jumped
from his seat und while he was in the
air his head was torn completely from
his shoulders by another shell—I d<
not know what kind. This wns enough
for me, so hack to the dugout
How the Germans did it I do not
know, but they had found out about
that road and opened flro at. exuctlj
the moment when the road was cov-
ered with wagons und men. Yet there
laid not been u balloon or airplane ic
the sky for some time.
Alter n while the bombardment
moved awny to the east, from which
direction I hnd come, and I knew oui
butteries were getting It. The Tomm;
and I came out of the dugout. As )
started climbing up the muddy side;
I saw there was a man standing at
the edge of It, and I could tell by hi;
puttees tliut he was a Limey. I wu
having u hard Job of It, bo without
looking up I hailed him.
The Nobby Tailors
(To be con tin in <i)
Exclusive Representative.
DR. L. K. SCHWAB
VETERINARY SURGEON AND
Rntlriv' Phone 1 ’
DENTIST
YAl.E. OKLAHOMA
Office I’hum 3
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The Yale Democrat (Yale, Okla.), Vol. 11, No. 41, Ed. 1 Monday, April 14, 1919, newspaper, April 14, 1919; Yale, Oklahoma. (https://gateway.okhistory.org/ark:/67531/metadc1136463/m1/6/: accessed July 18, 2024), The Gateway to Oklahoma History, https://gateway.okhistory.org; crediting Oklahoma Historical Society.