Martinsburg herald. [volume] (Martinsburg, W. Va.) 1881-1920, 1918-08-24
U. S. TIN HAT
IS SHELL PROOF
STEEL MADE TO GIVE UPON I'M.
PACT INSTEAD OF SHATTTR-
ING-HAS SAVED LIVES.
CBy NC AssocIated oress.l


PARIS, Aug. 21.-The case of one
American Marine who went through
a hail of shrapnel and machine gun
fire at Cantigny and is now GONZALES
cling from a wound in the great AM
erican military hospital at Neuilly, in
the Paris suburbs, seems to have de
monstrated that the American field
helmet, commonly called by soldiers,
the ''tin hat" is thoroughly reliable
article when put to the supreme test.
This marine owed his life to his tin
hat, and the peculiar qualities OF its
steel in giving slightly without shat
tering. In the midst of the action he
went down with a bah striking the
top of the helmet and pressing down
to the skull. He was brought back,
a.ong with the helmet which showed
deep indentation about the size of
half base ball. 1t was this linden
tation which had pressed down TO the
scalp, making wound (which requir-
ed trepaning. But there it stopped,
and the metal of the tin hat after Civ
ing to the missile until its force was
spent, had stopped in its deadly flight
straight toward the brain The ire
paning operation was only slight and
the marine was we'll on the way to
recovery.
The indented helmet was preserv-
ed, not as a souvenir, but to be for
warded to the ordnance experts al
Washington to show them the good
qualities of their helmets ut is said
that hard and brittle steel, which
would have resisted without giving,
would have been shattered to bits by
the impact and the ball would have
gone straight through the brain
In an adjoining ward a stalwart
young marine who had been in the
same Cantigny fight stood at atten-
ion with no apparent sign of wound.
But the surgeon, feeling the boys
throat, nodded approvingly and then
remarked that this was one Of the
most remarkable cases that had ever
come under his observation, and prob
ably the only case of the kind on re-
cord IA bullet had struck the soldier
in the left side of the neck and had
gone through to the outlet, where it
stopped, and had then descended or
been swallowed into the stomach.
AN X-ray examination clearly show
ed the ball in the intestines. But in
stead of removing it by an operation
the surgeons decided to await the
course of nature and see if the SOL
der would digest the rifle ball And
this he did. One of the surgeons re-
marked that the chances of such a
thing happening were less than one
in million, but a colleague added
that the chances were for less than
that as he could not recall any like
case in the whole range of military
surgery.
Many of the French poilus unier
American care were in the wards of
the Daughters of the American Con
federacy, with the beds marked with
the names of the well-known south
ern figures such as Stonewall Jack
son, Senator Zebulon Vance, General
Joseph Wheeler, of Alabama.
When the big dietary kitchen was
inspected later there was a savory
smell of American dishes and dain-
ties being prepared for the wounded
men, and one of the surgeons cheer
ed the cooks with the remark Your
dishes do more good than all our
medicines" And this is literally
true, for these American wounded do
not want foreign goods but long for