Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1914-12-18
GERMANy'S HEROES
D0NOT LOOK PART
Some of Those Decorated for
Bravery Are Hardly
Ad0nises.
IRON CROSS is BESTOWED
ONLY UPON THE BRAVEST
Lets Die Fighting Is Spirit
Which Is Accorded High
Military Honor.
BY HERBERT COREY.
Copyright. 1919


LONDON, December 10.-War heroes
do not look up to the frontispiece. They
are quite as apt to be scrubby little runts
as to be tall, thin-fanked Adonises wear
ing s2s suits Heroism does not seem
to comport with an aquiline beak any
more certainly than with nose marked
by depression and uncertainty. Men
with the fighting Jaws of fiction are very
often heroes. So are men with little
round chins like butter bowls.
There is the case of Friedrich, for ex-
ample.
Friedrich is at this moment sitting in
bed in the Templehof Hospital in Ber-
lin, wearing tight little white. night
gown. On the breast of that nightgown
is an Iron Cross. Friedrich keeps feel
ing it as if he feared it were not real.
He grins in the most shameless way
when he catches your eye. Friedrich is
ditfident, all right, but he isn't modest.
He suffers when he talks to you, be-
cause he is a grocers boy and you are
a Herr of some sort. But he talks, all
right. If he could get out of his little
white bed he'd hold you by the coat
until he told you all about it.
Friedrich's Encounter.
in Friedrich's place. Because he killed
cellar-he being all alone. And he knows
that the Iron Cross only goes to men
who deserve it. a good deal of mud
this war began But that sort of mud
will not stick. The plan is to scatter
about one cross to every twenty men, if
the cross is deserved Dead men do not
count. So the proportion is not indie
Gently high.
The Germans were in little village on
the Aisne. Every time they got into it
they were shelled right out of it. The
streets were positively heaped with dead
Germans. 1t became apparent that the
spies were informing the French batteries
of the precise disposition OF the German
troops. So that the next time they got
IN all the men who could be spared were
told off to hunt for spies. Friedrich hap
pened to be one Of them. He thinks he
was lucky
Il got into a cellar" said Friedrich,
and there were three Franchises using
the telephone. So killed them. Then
got the Iron Cross
Hero Round Little Man.
The point is that Friedrich is a round
little man-one of the little men who
could never be starved into lankness-
and has the most good-natured, kindly,
likable face you ever saw. He Is per-
haps twenty years old and works in
grocery. If you had to pick hero out Of
the whole German army Friedrich is
the last man you would select He looks
mostly like sutler. But he has the
Iron Cross. Also, lie has a bullet
his innocent bowels.
Top-Sergeant Clemens of the 35th
Brandenburg Fusiliers is another
on physical form. He
even lacks stolidity which passes for
calm in Friedrich. Top-Sergeant Glenn
ems Is nervous. Truth compels the adj
mission that Clemens is distinctly gabby.
There is too much altitude between his
eyebrows and the peak of his head TO
make for beauty. His eyes are very pale
blue, and his eyelashes are straw-color-
ed. When one shakes hands his palms
are sticky.
Nevertheless, Sergeant Clemens has
the Iron Cross. He has the added dis
tinction of having been mentioned in
general orders. SO that one may assume
his story is considered something out of
man left alive Of ninety three who
marched out of the village of Orchis,
near Lille. on September 81. Twenty
three made up the first squad. They
were Red Cross men-sanitary soldiers
the practical Germans call them.
Mind you." says the nervous Glenn
ems, rising in bed and waving his arms,
they went out to give aid to the
French wounded as well as to the Ger
man wounded"
Attacked by Peasants.
That view of the case happens not