Grand Forks daily herald., 1914-12-14
iron CROSS GOES TO SOLDIERS
WHO Say LETS DIE FIGHTING
Friedrich Was Grocers Boy, But He Went Into Cellar
ana k'lled Three Frenchmen-Top- Sergeant Clemens
Led Charge OF Eight Against 800 of the Enemy.

that sort of mud will not stick. The
plan is to scatter about one cross to
every twenty men, il the cross is de-
served. Dead men do not count. So
the proportion is not indecently high.
The Germans were in Il little VIII
laGc ON the Aisne. Every time they
got into IL they were shclled right ou,
of it. The streets were positively heap
Ell with dead Germans. 1t became ap-
parent that the spies were Informing
The French batteries of the precise
disposition of the German troops. ST.,
that the next time they got in all the
men who could be spared were tolu
off to hunt for spies. Friedrich hap.
penrd to be one Of them. He thinks
he was lucky.
81 get into II cellar" said Friedrich,
and there were three Franchises us
ing the telephone. So 1 killed them.
Then ] got the Iron Cross
Friedrich is a Round Little Man.
The point is that Friedrich is a
round little nan--one of the little
men who could never be starved into
laniness-and has the most good-na-
tured, kindly. likable faces you ever
saw. He is perhaps twenty years old
and works i'll grocery. If you had
to pick hero out OF tho whole Ger
man army Friedrich is the last man
YOU would select. He looks mostly
like butler. But he has the Iron
Cross. Also, he has a bullet through
his innocent bowels.
Top-sergeant Clemens the Thirty
fifth Brandenburg Fusiliers is another
disappointment OH physical form. He
even lacks II stolidity which passes
for calm in Friedrich. Top-Sergeant
Clemens is nervous. Truth compels
the admission that Clemens is dis
linctly gabby. There is too much al
titude between his eyebrows and the
peak of his head to make for beauty.
His eyes are very pale blue. and his
eyclashes are straw-colored. When
one shakes hands his palms are sticky.
Nevertheless, Sergeant Clements has
the Iron Cross. He has the added dis
tinction of having been mentioned in
general ORDERS 50 that one may as
sumo his story is considered some.
thing out OF the common run. Glenn
ems is the only man left alive Of nine
ty-three who marched out of the vii
lage Of Archis, near Lille, on Sept. ~.
Twenty-thrce 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 we'll as to the
German wounded"
That view of the case happens not
to have appealed to the French peas
ants about Archis. Their town had
been destroyed and their houses burn
cd and their goods taken anu their
women insulted. They are a grim lot
about Orchis, Clemens says He says
the old peasants muttered at the Ger
man army. They cast black looks.
"rhcy attacked our sanitary SOL
diers." says Clemens. "Our men were
unarrned. They had not been allowed
to carry rifles. These peasants attack
cd them with axes and scythes and
stones"
There is nothing inherently improb-
able IN that. Peasants have done
such things. They have u way Of elud-
ing the phrase military necessity" in
their talk and using such words us
murder and arson. They killed the
twenty-thrce sanitary soldiers.
The women" shouts Clemens. wav-
| ing his arms. ''suffocated the men