Father Duffy's story : $b a tale of humor and heroism, of life and death with the Fighting Sixty-ninthDuffy, Francis Patrick
History
Father Duffy's story : $b a tale of humor and heroism, of life and death with the Fighting Sixty-ninth
Duffy, Francis Patrick
United States. Army. Infantry Regiment, 165th; World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives, American
The Company M men were not so badly gassed, with the exception of
Sergeant Emerson. A good many of them were walking about with eyes
only slightly inflamed. I was immediately surrounded by Eustace,
Flanigan, Jack Manson, Harry Messmer, Bill Lanigan, Mark White,
Jock Cameron and a lot of others, all clamoring for news about the
regiment. I made myself a candidate for being canonized as a saint by
working at least a hundred first-class miracles when I announced that
we had come with the pay. The news was received with a shout, “Gimme
me pants, I’m all better now.”
There was one thing that disturbed us. We found most of our injured
in these two towns, but there was still a considerable number whose
pay we had that we could not find, and nobody was able to tell where
they had been sent.
BACCARAT
_April_ 7th, 1918
The reports which have arrived of the death in hospital of Robert
Allen, Walter Bigger and Lawrence Gavin of Company K gave us our
first information concerning the whereabouts of soldiers whom we
could not discover in our trip to the hospital. They died at the new
Army Hospital at Bazoilles near Neufchateau. As Tom Johnson of the
New York _Sun_ was visiting us, he offered to take me back with him
in his car to see them. They are in long, one-story hospital barracks
and most of them are almost recovered although Amos Dow and Herbert
Kelly are still very sick boys. With the assistance of the two First
Sergeants of K and M, Tim Sullivan and James McGarvey, who are also
patients, I paid them all off.
I also gave them a bit of news which was more gratefully received
than the pay, and that is saying a great deal. One of the hospital
authorities told me that a special order had arrived that men of the
165th who would be fit for duty by a certain date should be returned
direct to the regiment without going through a casual camp. He told
me also that the order was entirely an exceptional one, adding
laughingly that he would be glad to get rid of them. He said they
were the liveliest and most interesting lot of patients he ever had
to deal with, but they made themselves infernal pests by agitating
all the time to get back to their confounded old regiment. Howard
Gregory came up with a side car to take me back and I had another
chance to see our men in the other two hospitals and was glad to find
that they are all on the road to recovery.
REHERREY
_April_ 25th, 1918
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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