Bismarck daily tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, Dakota [N.D.]) 1881-1916, 1915-03-12
IlAIRRIQRWRAER
GIVES To WORLD
HIS HIS. GRIM Trim STORY
Makes Lightning Change From
Novel Writer to Leader Of
:" Men in Battle.
STRAIN WH!TENs HIS HAIR

NuIbSlo v SoNNi
Of Experience Crowded Into
His One Short Tour Of
Trench Duty.
7 Berlin.-Until a certain day last
summer Paul Oskar Hooker, Il OF
Germany's leading best seller writ
ers, divided his time between writing
novels and plays and admiring the
roses in his little garden close to Der
lin. Then, with the suddenness OF a
lightning stroke, he realized, as DID
hundreds Of thousands Of others, what
"anation in arms means. Paul Oskar
Hooker, novelist, playwright and lover
Of flowers, became overnight Captain
Hooker at the head OF a company III
the first reserve, giving orders to other
rlen, clothed all alike in the famous
German field gray, men who the day
before had been, n a painter, ansth'
er a cook, another a sculptor, another
q ~gravedigger.
With hundreds Of others they piled
into a troop train and headed for Bel
GUM. Exactly once more, the last
time for many months, was Hooker re-
minded of the life he had left behind
him. That was when a young girl ap'
preached him as he was washing his
face at one of the last German stations
where the troop train stopped and
blushingly asked: a~,~- .r,aa
"They-they tell me you are Hook
CT, the famous novelist? Is it true?"
IL Left His Autograph.
Captain Hooker nodded. - =
"Then, will you please give me your
autograph?' ~ a-aaa. + Z .n~
While the warning whistle of the
train announced its speedy departure,
Paul sOskar Hooker, novelist, wrote
down2his autograph and received the
girls smiling words of gratitude. A
couple Of days later Captain Hooker
of the reserve was giving the order to
a firing party to shoot down a Belgian
accused of "sniping." A few weeks
later he and the painter and the sculp-
tor and the gravedigger got their bap-
tism of fire zeal Lille. Then it vas
that Hooker had the narrowest posi-
BILE. escape from death. Shortly after
that he burrowel into a trench and
remained there for weeks without
roofn->.to stand up or lie down, while
countless shells screamed overhead
and racked his nerves to the breaking
point. "
Writes in Rain Of Fire.
All this Hooker has, set down In a
little book of his war experience called
"At the Head of My Company" which
has just appeared in Berlin, one of the
most graphic and convincing pieces OF
writing to come out of the war. He
wrote its various chapters in the hell
Of Belgium and northern France, send
Ing them back to be published as fast
as they were completed.
lockers company was n of hun
dreds upon hundreds that marched
through Belgium in the wake of that
German army that almost smashed its
way into Paris last September. lie and
his men passed through Wise, near
Liege, while it was still burning. Soon
after amid clouds of %suffocating smoke
that blinded them and hid their roads,
they tramped over the streets in the
outskirts of another burning town -
Louvain.
One night the captain was quartered
in a filthy stable; on another he sat
comfortably with the young vicar Of a
Belgian village on whom he was quar-
tered and talked not of wal and its
atrocities, but Of "Preraphaelites,
Turkish dialects and new kinds OF
roses!" After that came more uncom'
Portable night lodgings; then, just as
q spice Of variety, a night in a magni
ficent villa, a sleep in a bed used in
former years by King Leopold Of Bel
GUM. One woman, obliged to give the
captain lodging for the night in hel
house pleasantly remarked to him:
Anything I can do for you? Anything
I can get for you? Would you like me
to send you a barber?"
Declines Belgian Shave.
The captain said politely that hi
happened to possess a safety razor.
1.-THE idea Of being shaved by q Bel
gian didn't appeal to me at ALL" HI
grimly remarks.
Just as they crossed the French
frontier a packet of letters from hom'
arrived, giving Hooker the news tina
a play by him dealing with the war;
in Germany 100 years ago had jus
been performed in Berlin. Or receiv
Ing that letter he tells US he sat dowl
and reflected:
Where was I when that play o
mine was being given in Berlin? Oh
yes; sleeping on a mattress by a rail
way line threatened with a Belgian at
tack, my revolver by my side"
From such duties Captain Hooker
and his men moved southwark int
the real fighting one and got theil
baptism of fire with a vengeance il
the outskirts of Lille, siding aloni
narrow alleys amid the whistling o
bullets from roofs and windows, creep
Ing on all tours through the ditch I'm
Ing a high road, charging into burning
villages while unseen enemies poure'
shot and shell at them. 1t was all
-. tg . =. --.a.----.