True Stories of the Great War, Volume 3 (of 6): Tales of Adventure--Heroic Deeds--Exploits Told by the Soldiers, Officers, Nurses, Diplomats, Eye Witnesses
History
True Stories of the Great War, Volume 3 (of 6): Tales of Adventure--Heroic Deeds--Exploits Told by the Soldiers, Officers, Nurses, Diplomats, Eye Witnesses
World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives
I might refer here to the attitude of the women and even the little
children of Serbia and Greece. It is true that the hardest, most cruel
burdens of war fell upon the women and the children who are left widows
and orphans or who suffer while the men are at the front. It has always
been so, but as in every patriotic nation the women are suffering and
doing their share as bravely as the men. The soldiers are glad and
proud to die for their country, and their women folk and children are
proud to have them, despite the sorrow and privation.
It should be a lesson to us in America. Our men and our women and
children would be as ready and as willing to bear their burdens, but
now in peace and prosperity we should prepare against the time when we
may have to take up our burdens so that they may fall no more heavily
than is necessary.
Venizelos is above all a Greek.
"I do not care for myself or for what may become of me," he said. "I am
working and living and will die for Greece. Greece must live and live
in glory and integrity."
Salonica seemed to me the concentrated essence of life. It is a
kaleidoscopic scene. You come across the uniform of pretty nearly every
nationality, and every known language seems to be spoken. There are
soldiers and refugees, Turks and Christians, Greeks and Jews, and the
town hums like a beehive day and night. Troops are coming and going,
not only white men but negroes, Sudanese, Congoese, Annamese and many
others.
When I was in Serbia I had scooped up a handful of earth and had
treasured it and brought it back with me to Salonica, where I showed it
to some Serbs. Tears came into their eyes and they gazed upon it with
a reverence worthy of a sacred relic.
One man thrust his hand into it and said, "You have had the honor
and the joy, which, alas, I have not had, of setting foot on Serbian
soil freed from the invader. But I swear to you by this sacred earth
that I will not die until I have kissed the soil of my country. After
that----" he shrugged his shoulders.
By now this man, who was a soldier, may have fulfilled his vow, and if
so he is happy, though his kiss may have been a dying breath.
"KAMERADS"!--CAPTURING HUNS IN THE ALPS WITHOUT A FIGHT
_An Extract from the Diary of a Lieutenant of Alpine Chasseurs_
_Set down by Henri Viard_
A racy story told by a young French subaltern, showing how six Alpine
Chasseurs bluffed three hundred Huns, with eight officers, into
surrendering without a fight.--In the _Wide World Magazine_.
I--STORY OF SCOUTING IN THE ALPS
At 5 a.m. on a certain day orders were received for an attempt to drive
the enemy from certain strong entrenchments.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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