Grand Forks herald. [volume] (Grand Forks, N.D.) 1916-1955, 1918-08-22
Tin HAT" IS
RELIABLE IN
Big BATTLES
One Marine Who Went
Thru Heavy Fighting
Owes Life to Helmet.

Paris, Aug. 22.-(Correspondence
OF the Associated Press).-The case
of one American marine who went
through a hail of shrapnel and ma
chine u fire at Cantigny n is now
convalesctng from a wound in the
great American military hospital at
Neuilly. in the Paris suburbs, seems
to have demonstrated that the AMER
lean field helmet, commonly called
by soldiers, the tin hat" is a thor
oughly 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
shattering. In the midst Of the action
he went down with a ball striking the
top OF the helmet and pressing down
to the skull He was brought back,
along with the helmet which showed
a deep tndentation about the size of
half a baseball. It was this indenta-
scalp, making a wound which requfr-
ed trepaning. But there it stopped.
and the metal of the tin hat after
giving to the missile until its force
was spent, had stopped it in its dead
~ flight straight toward the brain.
The trepaning operation was only
slight and the marine was we'll on his
way 10 recovery.
The indented helmet was preserved,
not as a souvenir, but to be forwarded
to the ordnance experts at Washing
ton to show them the good qualities
Of their helmets. It is said that a
hard and brittle steel, which would
have resisted without giving would
have been shattered to bits by the i'm
pact 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 attention
with no apparent sign Of wound. But
the surgeon, feeling the boys throat,
nodded approvingly and then re-
marked that this was one of the
most remarkable cases that had ever
come under his observation, and prob
ably the only a s of the kind onIrec-
ord. A bullet had struck the soldier
in the left side of the neck and had
it stopped, and had then descended
or been swallowed into the stomach.
An x-ray examination clearly
showed the ball in the in%testines. But
instead OF removing it by an opera
ton the surgeons decided to await
the course of nature and see If the
soldier would digest the rifle ball.
n this he did. One of the surgeons
remarked that the chances of such a
thing happening were less than one
in a million, but a colleague added
that the chances were far less thar
that as he could not recall any like
case in the whole range of military
surgery.
Many Of the French poilus unde,
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 southern
figures, such as Stonewall Jackson
Senator Zebulon Vance, General Jo-
seph' Wheeler Of Alabama.
Wien the big dietary kitchen was
inspected later there was a savory
smell of American dishes and dainties
being prepared for the wounded men
and n of the surgeons cheered 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 for.
eign foods but long for the simple
o~ld-fashioned dishes OF home, like
boiled custard, matted milk. egg-noe
and bread and milk. So that. ever
in the food American cooks are doine
their share. and down to the last de.
tail the Americanism of the big mill.
tary hospital is proving a blessing tc
the American manned and wounded
who have come back from the front