IN the Chinese-Japanese War the battle of the Yalu was the first battle
fought between warships of modern make, and, except on paper, neither
the men who made them nor the men who fought them knew what the ships
could do, or what they might not do. For years every naval power had
been building these new engines of war, and in the battle which was to
test them the whole world was interested. But in this battle Americans
had a special interest, a human, family interest, for the reason that
one of the Chinese squadron, which was matched against some of the same
vessels of Japan which lately swept those of Russia from the sea, was
commanded by a young graduate of the American Naval Academy. This young
man, who, at the time of the battle of the Yalu, was thirty-three years
old, was Captain Philo Norton McGiffin. So it appears that five years
before our fleet sailed to victory in Manila Bay another graduate of
Annapolis, and one twenty years younger than in 1898 was Admiral Dewey,
had commanded in action a modern battleship, which, in tonnage, in
armament, and in the number of the ships’ company, far outclassed
Dewey’s _Olympia_.
McGiffin, who was born on December 13, 1860, came of fighting stock.
Back in Scotland the family is descended from the Clan MacGregor and the
Clan MacAlpine.
“These are Clan-Alpine’s warriors true, And, Saxon--I am Roderick Dhu.”
McGiffin’s great-grandfather, born in Scotland, emigrated to this
country and settled in “Little Washington,” near Pittsburg, Pa. In the
Revolutionary War he was a soldier. Other relatives fought in the War of
1812, one of them holding a commission as major. McGiffin’s own father
was Colonel Norton McGiffin, who served in the Mexican War, and in
the Civil War was Lieutenant-Colonel of the Eighty-fifth Pennsylvania
Volunteers. So McGiffin inherited his love for arms.
In Washington he went to the high school and at the Washington Jefferson
College had passed through his freshman year. But the honors that might
accrue to him if he continued to live on in the quiet and pretty old
town of Washington did not tempt him. To escape into the world he
wrote his Congressman, begging him to obtain for him an appointment to
Annapolis. The Congressman liked the letter, and wrote Colonel McGiffin
to ask if the application of his son had his approval. Colonel McGiffin
was willing, and in 1877 his son received his commission as cadet
midshipman. I knew McGiffin only as a boy with whom in vacation time I
went coon hunting in the woods outside of Washington. For his age he was
a very tall boy, and in his midshipman undress uniform, to my youthful
eyes, appeared a most bold and adventurous spirit.
At Annapolis his record seems to show he was pretty much like other
boys. According to his classmates, with all of whom I find he was very
popular, he stood high in the practical studies, such as seamanship,
gunnery, navigation, and steam engineering, but in all else he was near
the foot of the class, and in whatever escapade was risky and reckless
he was always one of the leaders. To him discipline was extremely
irksome. He could maintain it among others, but when it applied to
himself it bored him. On the floor of the Academy building on which was
his room there was a pyramid of cannon balls--relics of the War of 1812.
They stood at the head of the stairs, and one warm night, when he could
not sleep, he decided that no one else should do so, and, one by one,
rolled the cannon balls down the stairs. They tore away the banisters
and bumped through the wooden steps and leaped off into the lower halls.
For any one who might think of ascending to discover the motive power
back of the bombardment they were extremely dangerous. But an officer
approached McGiffin in the rear, and, having been caught in the act, he
was sent to the prison ship. There he made good friends with his jailer,
an old man-of-warsman named “Mike.” He will be remembered by many naval
officers who as midshipmen served on the _Santee_. McGiffin so won
over Mike that when he left the ship he carried with him six charges of
gunpowder. These he loaded into the six big guns captured in the Mexican
War, which lay on the grass in the centre of the Academy grounds, and at
midnight on the eve of July 1st he fired a salute. It aroused the entire
garrison, and for a week the empty window frames kept the glaziers busy.
About 1878 or 1879 there was a famine in Ireland. The people of New York
City contributed provisions for the sufferers, and to carry the supplies
to Ireland the Government authorized the use of the old _Constellation_.
At the time the voyage was to begin each cadet was instructed to
consider himself as having been placed in command of the _Constellation_
and to write a report on the preparations made for the voyage, on the
loading of the vessel, and on the distribution of the stores. This
exercise was intended for the instruction of the cadets; first in the
matter of seamanship and navigation, and second in making official
reports. At that time it was a very difficult operation to get a gun out
of the port of a vessel where the gun was on a covered deck. To do this
the necessary tackles had to be rigged from the yard-arm and the yard
and mast properly braced and stayed, and then the lower block of the
tackle carried in through the gun port, which, of course, gave the fall
a very bad reeve. The first part of McGiffin’s report dealt with a new
method of dismounting the guns and carrying them through the gun ports,
and so admirable was his plan, so simple and ingenious, that it was
used whenever it became necessary to dismount a gun from one of the
old sailing ships. Having, however, offered this piece of good work,
McGiffin’s report proceeded to tell of the division of the ship into
compartments that were filled with a miscellaneous assortment of stores,
which included the old “fifteen puzzles,” at that particular time very
popular. The report terminated with a description of the joy of the
famished Irish as they received the puzzle-boxes. At another time the
cadets were required to write a report telling of the suppression of the
insurrection on the Isthmus of Panama. McGiffin won great praise for
the military arrangements and disposition of his men, but, in the same
report, he went on to describe how he armed them with a new gun known as
Baines’s Rhetoric and told of the havoc he wrought in the enemy’s
ranks when he fired these guns loaded with similes and metaphors and
hyperboles.
Of course, after each exhibition of this sort he was sent to the
_Santee_ and given an opportunity to meditate.
On another occasion, when one of the instructors lectured to the cadets,
he required them to submit a written statement embodying all that they
could recall of what had been said at the lecture. One of the rules
concerning this report provided that there should be no erasures or
interlineations, but that when mistakes were made the objectionable or
incorrect expressions should be included within parentheses; and that
the matter so enclosed within parentheses would not be considered a part
of the report. McGiffin wrote an excellent _resume_ of the lecture,
but he interspersed through it in parentheses such words as “applause,”
“cheers,” “cat-calls,” and “groans,” and as these words were enclosed
within parentheses he insisted that they did not count, and made a very
fair plea that he ought not to be punished for words which slipped in
by mistake, and which he had officially obliterated by what he called
oblivion marks.
He was not always on mischief bent. On one occasion, when the house of a
professor caught fire, McGiffin ran into the flames and carried out two
children, for which act he was commended by the Secretary of the Navy.
It was an act of Congress that determined that the career of McGiffin
should be that of a soldier of fortune. This was a most unjust act,
which provided that only as many midshipmen should receive commissions
as on the warships there were actual vacancies. In those days, in 1884,
our navy was very small. To-day there is hardly a ship having her full
complement of officers, and the difficulty is not to get rid of those we
have educated, but to get officers to educate. To the many boys who, on
the promise that they would be officers of the navy, had worked for
four years at the Academy and served two years at sea, the act was most
unfair. Out of a class of about ninety, only the first twelve were given
commissions and the remaining eighty turned adrift upon the uncertain
seas of civil life. As a sop, each was given one thousand dollars.
McGiffin was not one of the chosen twelve. In the final examinations on
the list he was well toward the tail. But without having studied
many things, and without remembering the greater part of them, no
one graduates from Annapolis, even last on the list; and with his one
thousand dollars in cash, McGiffin had also this six years of education
at what was then the best naval college in the world. This was his only
asset--his education--and as in his own country it was impossible to
dispose of it, for possible purchasers he looked abroad.
At that time the Tong King war was on between France and China, and he
decided, before it grew rusty, to offer his knowledge to the followers
of the Yellow Dragon. In those days that was a hazard of new fortunes
that meant much more than it does now. To-day the East is as near as San
Francisco; the Japanese-Russian War, our occupation of the Philippines,
the part played by our troops in the Boxer trouble, have made the
affairs of China part of the daily reading of every one. Now, one can
step into a brass bed at Forty-second Street and in four days at the
Coast get into another brass bed, and in twelve more be spinning down
the Bund of Yokohama in a rickshaw. People go to Japan for the winter
months as they used to go to Cairo.
But in 1885 it was no such light undertaking, certainly not for a young
man who had been brought up in the quiet atmosphere of an inland
town, where generations of his family and other families had lived and
intermarried, content with their surroundings.
With very few of his thousand dollars left him, McGiffin arrived in
February, 1885, in San Francisco. From there his letters to his family
give one the picture of a healthy, warm-hearted youth, chiefly anxious
lest his mother and sister should “worry.” In our country nearly every
family knows that domestic tragedy when the son and heir “breaks home
ties,” and starts out to earn a living; and if all the world loves a
lover, it at least sympathizes with the boy who is “looking for a job.”
The boy who is looking for the job may not think so, but each of those
who has passed through the same hard place gives him, if nothing else,
his good wishes. McGiffin’s letters at this period gain for him from
those who have had the privilege to read them the warmest good feeling.
They are filled with the same cheery optimism, the same slurring over
of his troubles, the same homely jokes, the same assurances that he is
feeling “bully,” and that it all will come out right, that every boy,
when he starts out in the world, sends back to his mother.
“I am in first-rate health and spirits, so I don’t want you to fuss
about me. I am big enough and ugly enough to scratch along somehow, and
I will not starve.”
To his mother he proudly sends his name written in Chinese characters,
as he had been taught to write it by the Chinese Consul-General in San
Francisco, and a pen-picture of two elephants. “I am going to bring you
home _two_ of these,” he writes, not knowing that in the strange and
wonderful country to which he is going elephants are as infrequent as
they are in Pittsburg.
He reached China in April, and from Nagasaki on his way to Shanghai
the steamer that carried him was chased by two French gunboats. But,
apparently much to his disappointment, she soon ran out of range of
their guns. Though he did not know it then, with the enemy he had
travelled so far to fight this was his first and last hostile meeting;
for already peace was in the air.
Of that and of how, in spite of peace, he obtained the “job” he wanted,
he must tell you himself in a letter home:
TIEN-TSIN, CHINA, April 13, 1885.
“MY DEAR MOTHER--I have not felt much in the humor for writing, for
I did not know what was going to happen. I spent a good deal of money
coming out, and when I got here, I knew, unless something turned up,
I was a gone coon. We got off Taku forts Sunday evening and the next
morning we went inside; the channel is very narrow and sown with
torpedoes. We struck one--an electric one--in coming up, but it didn’t
go off. We were until 10.30 P.M. in coming up to Tien-Tsin--thirty miles
in a straight line, but nearly seventy by the river, which is only about
one hundred feet wide--and we grounded ten times.
“Well--at last we moored and went ashore. Brace Girdle, an engineer, and
I went to the hotel, and the first thing we heard was--that _peace was
declared!_ I went back on board ship, and I didn’t sleep much--I never
was so blue in my life. I knew if they didn’t want me that I might as
well give up the ghost, for I could never get away from China. Well--I
worried around all night without sleep, and in the morning I felt as
if I had been drawn through a knot-hole. I must have lost ten pounds. I
went around about 10 A.M. and gave my letters to Pethick, an American
U. S. Vice-Consul and interpreter to Li Hung Chang. He said he would fix
them for me. Then I went back to the ship, and as our captain was going
up to see Li Hung Chang, I went along out of desperation. We got in,
and after a while were taken in through corridor after corridor of the
Viceroy’s palace until we got into the great Li, when we sat down and
had tea and tobacco and talked through an interpreter. When it came
my turn he asked: ‘Why did you come to China?’ I said: ‘To enter the
Chinese service for the war.’ ‘How do you expect to enter?’ ‘I expect
_you_ to give me a commission!’ ‘I have no place to offer you.’ ‘I think
you have--I have come all the way from America to get it.’ ‘What would
you like?’ ‘I would like to get the new torpedo-boat and go down the
Yang-tse-Kiang to the blockading squadron.’ ‘Will you do that?’ ‘Of
course.’
“He thought a little and said: ‘I will see what can be done. Will you
take $100 a month for a start?’ I said: ‘That depends.’ (Of course
I would take it.) Well, after parley, he said he would put me on the
flagship, and if I did well he would promote me. Then he looked at me
and said: ‘How old are you?’ When I told him I was twenty-four I thought
he would faint--for in China a man is a _boy_ until he is over thirty.
He said I would _never_ do--I was a child. I could not know anything at
all. I could not convince him, but at last he compromised--I was to pass
an examination at the Arsenal at the Naval College, in all branches,
and if they passed me I would have a show. So we parted. I reported for
examination next day, but was put off--same the next day. But to-day I
was told to come, and sat down to a stock of foolscap, and had a
pretty stiff exam. I am only just through. I had seamanship, gunnery,
navigation, nautical astronomy, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, conic
sections, curve tracing, differential and integral calculus. I had only
three questions out of five to answer in each branch, but in the first
three I answered all five. After that I only had time for three, but
at the end he said I need not finish, he was perfectly satisfied. I had
done remarkably well, and he would report to the Viceroy to-morrow. He
examined my first papers--seamanship--said I was _perfect_ in it, so I
will get _along_, you need not fear. I told the Consul--he was very well
pleased--he is a nice man.
“I feel pretty well now--have had dinner and am smoking a good Manila
cheroot. I wrote hard all day, wrote fifteen sheets of foolscap and made
about a dozen drawings--got pretty tired.
“I have had a hard scramble for the service and only got in by the
skin of my teeth. I guess I will go to bed--I will sleep well
to-night--Thursday.
“I did not hear from the Naval Secretary, Tuesday, so yesterday morning
I went up to the Admiralty and sent in my card. He came out and received
me very well--said I had passed a ‘very splendid examination’; had been
recommended very strongly to the Viceroy, who was very much pleased;
that the Director of the Naval College over at the Arsenal had wanted me
and would I go over at once? I _would_. It was about five miles. We (a
friend, who is a great rider here) went on steeplechase ponies--we were
ferried across the Pei Ho in a small scow and then had a long ride.
There _is_ a path--but Pritchard insisted on taking all the ditches,
and as my pony jumped like a cat, it wasn’t nice at first, but I didn’t
squeal and kept my seat and got the swing of it at last and rather liked
it. I think I will keep a horse here--you can hire one and a servant
together for $7 a month; that is $5.60 of our money, and pony and man
found in everything.
“Well--at last we got to the Arsenal--a place about four miles around,
fortified, where all sorts of arms--cartridges, shot and shell, engines,
and _everything_--are made. The Naval College is inside surrounded by
a moat and wall. I thought to myself, if the cadet here is like to the
thing I used to be at the U. S. N. A. _that_ won’t keep him in. I went
through a lot of yards till I was ushered into a room finished in black
ebony and was greeted very warmly by the Director. We took seats on a
raised platform--Chinese style and pretty soon an interpreter came, one
of the Chinese professors, who was educated abroad, and we talked and
drank tea. He said I had done well, that he had the authority of the
Viceroy to take me there as ‘Professor’ of seamanship and gunnery; in
addition I might be required to teach navigation or nautical astronomy,
or drill the cadets in infantry, artillery, and fencing. For this I was
to receive what would be in our money $1,800 per annum, as near as we
can compare it, paid in gold each month. Besides, I will have a house
furnished for my use, and it is their intention, as soon as I _show_
that I _know_ something, to considerably increase my pay. They asked
the Viceroy to give me 130 T per month (about $186) and house, but the
Viceroy said I was _but a boy_; that I had seen no years and had only
come here a week ago with no one to vouch for me, and that I might turn
out an impostor. But he would risk 100 T on me anyhow, and as soon as
I was reported favorably on by the college I would be raised--the
agreement is to be for three years. For a few months I am to command
a training ship--an ironclad that is in dry dock at present, until a
captain in the English Navy comes out, who has been sent for to command
her.
“_So Here I am_--twenty-four years old and captain of a man-of-war--a
better one than any in our own navy--only for a short time, of course,
but I would be a pretty long time before I would command one at home.
Well--I accepted and will enter on my duties in a week, as soon as my
house is put in order. I saw it--it has a long veranda, very broad; with
flower garden, apricot trees, etc., just covered with blossoms; a wide
hall on the front, a room about 18x15, with a 13-foot ceiling; then back
another rather larger, with a cupola skylight in the centre, where I
am going to put a shelf with flowers. The Government is to furnish the
house with bed, tables, chairs, sideboards, lounges, stove for kitchen.
I have grates (American) in the room, but I don’t need them. We have
snow, and a good deal of ice in winter, but the thermometer never gets
below zero. I have to supply my own crockery. I will have two servants
and cook; I will only get one and the cook first--they only cost $4
to $5.50 per month, and their board amounts to very little. I can get
along, don’t you think so? Now I want you to get Jim to pack up all
my professional works on gunnery, surveying, seamanship, mathematics,
astronomy, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, conic sections, calculus,
mechanics, and _every_ book of that description I own, including those
paperbound ‘Naval Institute’ papers, and put them in a box, together
with any photos, etc., you think I would like--I have none of you or Pa
or the family (including Carrie)--and send to me.
“I just got in in time--didn’t I? Another week would have been too late.
My funds were getting low; I would not have had _anything_ before long.
The U. S. Consul, General Bromley, is much pleased. The interpreter says
it was all in the way I did with the Viceroy in the interview.
“I will have a chance to go to Peking and later to a tiger hunt in
Mongolia, but for the present I am going to study, work, and _stroke_
these mandarins till I get a raise. I am the only instructor in both
seamanship and gunnery, and I must know _everything_, both practically
and theoretically. But it will be good for me and the only thing is,
that if I were put back into the Navy I would be in a dilemma. I think
I will get my ‘influence’ to work, and I want you people at home to
look out, and in case I _am_--if it were represented to the Sec. that
my position here was giving me an immense lot of practical knowledge
professionally--more than I could get on a ship at sea--I think he would
give me two years’ leave on half or quarter pay. Or, I would be willing
to do without pay--only to be kept on the register in my rank.
“I will write more about this. Love to all.”
It is characteristic of McGiffin that in the very same letter in which
he announces he has entered foreign service he plans to return to
that of his own country. This hope never left him. You find the same
homesickness for the quarterdeck of an American man-of-war all through
his later letters. At one time a bill to reinstate the midshipmen who
had been cheated of their commissions was introduced into Congress. Of
this McGiffin writes frequently as “our bill.” “It may pass,” he writes,
“but I am tired hoping. I have hoped so long. And if it should,” he adds
anxiously, “there may be a time limit set in which a man must rejoin, or
lose his chance, so do not fail to let me know as quickly as you can.”
But the bill did not pass, and McGiffin never returned to the navy that
had cut him adrift. He settled down at Tien-Tsin and taught the young
cadets how to shoot. Almost all of those who in the Chinese-Japanese War
served as officers were his pupils. As the navy grew, he grew with
it, and his position increased in importance. More Mexican dollars per
month, more servants, larger houses, and buttons of various honorable
colors were given him, and, in return, he established for China a modern
naval college patterned after our own. In those days throughout China
and Japan you could find many of these foreign advisers. Now, in Japan,
the Hon. W. H. Dennison of the Foreign Office, one of our own people, is
the only foreigner with whom the Japanese have not parted, and in China
there are none. Of all of those who have gone none served his employers
more faithfully than did McGiffin. At a time when every official
robbed the people and the Government, and when “squeeze” or “graft”
was recognized as a perquisite, McGiffin’s hands were clean. The shells
purchased for the Government by him were not loaded with black sand,
nor were the rifles fitted with barrels of iron pipe. Once a year he
celebrated the Thanksgiving Day of his own country by inviting to a
great dinner all the Chinese naval officers who had been at least in
part educated in America. It was a great occasion, and to enjoy
it officers used to come from as far as Port Arthur, Shanghai, and
Hong-Kong. So fully did some of them appreciate the efforts of their
host that previous to his annual dinner, for twenty-four hours, they
delicately starved themselves.
During ten years McGiffin served as naval constructor and professor
of gunnery and seamanship, and on board ships at sea gave practical
demonstrations in the handling of the new cruisers. In 1894 he applied
for leave, which was granted, but before he had sailed for home war with
Japan was declared and he withdrew his application. He was placed
as second in command on board the _Chen Yuen_, a seven-thousand-ton
battleship, a sister ship to the _Ting Yuen_, the flagship of Admiral
Ting Ju Chang. On the memorable 17th of September, 1894, the battle of
the Yalu was fought, and so badly were the Chinese vessels hammered that
the Chinese navy, for the time being, was wiped out of existence.
From the start the advantage was with the Japanese fleet. In heavy guns
the Chinese were the better armed, but in quick-firing guns the Japanese
were vastly superior, and while the Chinese battleships _Ting Yuen_ and
_Chen Yuen_, each of 7,430 tons, were superior to any of the Japanese
warships, the three largest of which were each of 4,277 tons, the gross
tonnage of the Japanese fleet was 36,000 to 21,000 of the Chinese.
During the progress of the battle the ships engaged on each side
numbered an even dozen, but at the very start, before a decisive shot
was fired by either contestant, the _Tsi Yuen_, 2,355 tons, and _Kwan
Chiae_, 1,300 tons, ran away, and before they had time to get into the
game the _Chao Yung_ and _Yang Wei_ were in flames and had fled to the
nearest land. So the battle was fought by eight Chinese ships against
twelve of the Japanese. Of the Chinese vessels, the flagship, commanded
by Admiral Ting, and her sister ship, which immediately after the
beginning of the fight was for four hours commanded by McGiffin, were
the two chief aggressors, and in consequence received the fire of the
entire Japanese squadron. Toward the end of the fight, which without
interruption lasted for five long hours, the Japanese did not even
consider the four smaller ships of the enemy, but, sailing around the
two ironclads in a circle, fired only at them. The Japanese themselves
testified that these two ships never lost their formation, and that
when her sister ironclad was closely pressed the _Chen Yuen_, by her
movements and gun practice, protected the _Ting Yuen_, and, in fact,
while she could not prevent the heavy loss the fleet encountered,
preserved it from annihilation. During the fight this ship was almost
continuously on fire, and was struck by every kind of projectile, from
the thirteen-inch Canet shells to a rifle bullet, four hundred times.
McGiffin himself was so badly wounded, so beaten about by concussions,
so burned, and so bruised by steel splinters, that his health and
eyesight were forever wrecked. But he brought the _Chen Yuen_ safely
into Port Arthur and the remnants of the fleet with her.
On account of his lack of health he resigned from the Chinese service
and returned to America. For two years he lived in New York City,
suffering in body without cessation the most exquisite torture. During
that time his letters to his family show only tremendous courage. On the
splintered, gaping deck of the _Chen Yuen_, with the fires below it,
and the shells bursting upon it, he had shown to his Chinese crew the
courage of the white man who knew he was responsible for them and for
the honor of their country. But far greater and more difficult was the
courage he showed while alone in the dark sick-room, and in the private
wards of the hospitals.
In the letters he dictates from there he still is concerned only lest
those at home shall “worry”; he reassures them with falsehoods, jokes
at their fears; of the people he can see from the window of the hospital
tells them foolish stories; for a little boy who has been kind he asks
them to send him his Chinese postage stamps; he plans a trip he will
take with them when he is stronger, knowing he never will be stronger.
The doctors had urged upon him a certain operation, and of it to a
friend he wrote: “I know that I will have to have a piece about three
inches square cut out of my skull, and this nerve cut off near the
middle of the brain, as well as my eye taken out (for a couple of hours
only, provided it is not mislaid, and can be found). Doctor ------ and
his crowd show a bad memory for failures. As a result of this operation
others have told me--I forget the percentage of deaths, which does not
matter, but--that a large percentage have become insane. And some lost
their sight.”
While threatened with insanity and complete blindness, and hourly from
his wounds suffering a pain drugs could not master, he dictated for the
_Century Magazine_ the only complete account of the battle of the Yalu.
In a letter to Mr. Richard Watson Gilder he writes: “...my eyes are
troubling me. I cannot see even what I am writing now, and am getting
the article under difficulties. I yet hope to place it in your hands by
the 21st, still, if my eyes grow worse------”
“Still, if my eyes grow worse------”
The unfinished sentence was grimly prophetic.
Unknown to his attendants at the hospital, among the papers in his
despatch-box he had secreted his service revolver. On the morning of the
11th of February, 1897, he asked for this box, and on some pretext sent
the nurse from the room. When the report of the pistol brought them
running to his bedside, they found the pain-driven body at peace, and
the tired eyes dark forever.
In the article in the _Century_ on the battle of the Yalu, he had said:
“Chief among those who have died for their country is Admiral Ting Ju
Chang, a gallant soldier and true gentleman. Betrayed by his countrymen,
fighting against odds, almost his last official act was to stipulate
for the lives of his officers and men. His own he scorned to save, well
knowing that his ungrateful country would prove less merciful than his
honorable foe. Bitter, indeed, must have been the reflections of the
old, wounded hero, in that midnight hour, as he drank the poisoned cup
that was to give him rest.”
And bitter indeed must have been the reflections of the young wounded
American, robbed, by the parsimony of his country, of the right he had
earned to serve it, and who was driven out to give his best years and
his life for a strange people under a strange flag.