The Birmingham age-herald., 1915-12-07
.FRENCHMAN CALLS
 ON DEAD COMRADES
 ID WHIP GERMANS
ImpetuOus Liteutenant Has Inspiration in Midst of Battle Which Turns De-
 feat Into Victory

Paris, November 29.-(Correspondence of war has taken so strong a hold on the French imagination as that of the sol- dier who in the press of the fighting, when most of his comrades lay dead around him, called upon them as the Ger mans repeated their attack Up with you, ye dead mem" and with the help of their spirits, assisted by few wounded, routed the foe
 The story is told in the Echo De Paris: "The Germans had swarmed into a French trench and broken down the resistance of the defenders, whose bodies covered the ground. Suddenly a man rose, and, seiz- ing a sack of grenades, he shouted, De bout les Mortsl' At this summons the wounded in the trench staggered to their feet and drove the enemy out.'
 The hero of the episode was Lieutenant Pericard, a man of s. whose hair is already white.' He started the campaign as a sergeant but was quickly, promoted to the commissioned ranks. Pericard is
  is his own story, as repeated by the Echo's interviewer:
 ''rhe trench was full of corpses, with blood everywhere. At first I walked deli cately, uneasy I alone with all these dead. Then. little by little, I grew bolder, and ventured to look at them. They seemed to be watching me. From our u ench behind my men were watching me with terrior in their eyes, thinking, He's sure to be killed It is true that the Boches were redoubling their efforts. Their grenades were pouring down and the stream of them was rapidly getting nearer. Was their sacrifice to be use- less?
 q was seized with a holy madness Of what l did, of what exactly said, I no longer remember. I know only that I cried out, Get up! Why don't you get up?' Debout les morts)"
 Was it madness? No: because the dead answered me. They said, We are follow ing
 And as I cried to them their souls joined my soul and made a glowing mass or it, a stream of fused metal. Noth- ing could astonish or sIop me. l had the faith that moves mountains, the ex- altation of the worker of miracles, who by his will causes the miracle. My voice, which was hoarse and worn out with shouting orders for two days and nights, came back to be clear and strong. l feared nothing. I felt I was master of destiny.
 "One of the men of my section, wound- ed in the arm, kept on throwing grenades that were stained with his blood. As for me, I have the impression of having had an increased bodily size. was giant with superabundant, limitless energy, an extraordinary ease of thought which let me have my eyes in 10 places at once, to give orders to one, to dictate and or der to another to shoot with a rifle, and at the same time to avoid threatening grenade. It was d prodigiously intense life with extraordinary circumstances. Twice we ran out of grenades, and twice we found at our feet sackfulls of them mixed with sandbags All day we had gone over them without seeing them. But it was the dead who had placed them there.
 '.All that night I kept the religious emo- ton that had seized me when l called on the dead felt something comparable with what is felt after a fervent com nunion."