The Key West citizen. [volume] (Key West, Fla.) 1879-current, 1946-05-02

Two new books, one dealing
with the bonus marchers of 1882,
the other, Birds of the Lower
Florida Keys, have just been
published. Both were written by
Key Westers. Following are the
reviews: riili's
the Lost Men,, gripping psy
Geological novel by Benedict
Thiclen of Key West has just
been released by d. Appleton
Century Co., New York.
The Lost Men" are lost in two
senses of the word-lost to So
ciety because they could not fit
into il, partly because they were
spiritually and mentally wound
cd in the First World War, and
lost in the hurricane that swept
Lower Matecumbe Labor Day in
1885.
Mr. Thielen's characters are
chosen from among the luckless
and unlovely group of bonus
marchers", veterans of the Amer
lean army, who were driven out
of Washington in the autumn Of
1882 by federal troops personally
commanded by General Douglas;
Macarthur al that time chief of
staff They were among the
remnants who would not or Gould
not find work and who were IN
stalled in camps on the Keys be-
cause a-perhaps not ungrateflil,f
bat eonfused~~group of governs
ment officials didn't know what
else TO do with them y.
They were among the men for
whom the rescue train came too
late. They were men who came
to burial with military honors
when their bodies were found
after the fiercest and most devas-
tating hurricane that ever was
visited upon our islands. The
story Of these lost men begins
with the ripples that rocked a
tanker in ballast riding high as
trounded Loggerhead Key for
the run up the Gulf; and when
Herbert Thomas remarked, Ser
tainly is windy, and looked out
of the window of the shack. He
thought it funny that "it's blow
ing. off the Gulf" after having
blown off the ocean all summer.
The development of the storm
Is thrillingly told-and in such
detail that it reveals a great many
hours of research. And what
goes on in the minds of the, lost
men in their last hours reveals
. Benedict Thielen as mind-read-
eT or something very like it. The
authors other books and his many
short stories are noteworthy forf
this same characteristic but this
new work discovers the sources
OF the streams of consciousness"
and follows them through noun
tain passes, deep gorges, through
fiat lands to their emrIying
places.
The book is not just the story
of the storm nor just a story of
the men. 1t is a story of the
storm and the men and of the
world and its impact on individ-
uals. The characters in this story
happen to be men possibly less
deserving than most men, but
men more surely crushed by the
heaviness of life's burdens and
by the "reminiscences of Nature
as manifest in the great hurri-
cane.
MIR. Thielen, who is known as
Bob" to his friends and neigh
bors in Key West, knows about
hurricanes from painful first
hand experience. His own house
in Martha's Vineyard, where he
lives during the summer months,
was swept away during the hur-
ricane that hit New England in
1888. Bob and his wife, Virginia
Berresford, owe their lives to the
fact that they are both strong
swimmers.
The Thielen home in Key West
is a tory-and-a-half house in Dey
Street Bob kept workingman's
hours last winter on another nov
el which is in the hands of his
publishers. The Thielens depart
ed for the North about two weeks
ago.
The publication of Birds of
n MIL I/.-.osy L., E~,.I~