Lieut. Charles Sweeny, of the French Foreign Legion, returned
to New York to recover from a wound received during the French
offensive in Champagne. Sweeny is an American, a graduate of West
Point, and the son of a former president of the Federal Smelting
and Refining Co., of Spokane, Wash. The following story, of a most
unusual "Dutch treat," was told by Lieut. Sweeny to Private Casey,
a New York artist, also fighting in the Foreign Legion, to the _New
York World_.
You have read of the cordial exchanges of tobacco and tidbits between
the men of the North and the South, who were facing each other as
deadly foes in the rifle pits during the Civil War. These exchanges
(the amicable ones, of course) were quaint and peculiar enough between
those avowed enemies, even though both were of the same blood and spoke
the same tongue. But the one which now interests us took place during
the present war, between Lieut. Charlie Sweeny of the French Foreign
Legion, and the Germans in the adjacent trenches; by which exchange the
Germans got nothing, and Sweeny got a feast of "hot dogs!"
Sweeny, as you may infer from his name, is not a Frenchmen, even though
he happens to be in the army service of France. I am also in the same
service and my name is Casey. We are both Americans. Sweeny is a West
Point graduate, and a native of Spokane, Wash. After his graduation
from West Point he married a Belgian girl and settled down in Paris.
His wife and two small children are living in that vicinity at the
present time.
When the war broke out Sweeny enlisted in the French Foreign Legion.
He was promoted for gallantry in action; and last September, after
leading us into the Boche lines during the Champagne offensive, he was
decorated with the Legion of Honor. Lieut. Sweeny is the first American
in fifty years who has held a commission in the French army.
But how Sweeny won his "hot dogs" is a different story.
One day when we were in the front trenches Sweeny handed me a
cigarette. It looked like a Turkish cigarette and I duly remarked it.
"No," said he, and he indicated a large tin box filled with the same
sort, which he had with him, "these are a present from our friends, the
enemy. They were given to me by the Germans."
"Must have been sent over to you inside a 'Jack Johnson' shell," said
I.
"I can see you don't believe me," Sweeny replied, "but it's a fact.
They came in a hamper, together with two bottles of real Munich beer,
an assortment of Westphalian ham, cheese, honey, sandwiches of roast
veal and white bread, a few slabs of K bread, some pipe tobacco, and
some--what do you think?--hot dogs! As sure as you're born, Casey, and
if you'll believe me, I went for those frankfurters first! Oh, how many
nights I have sat out here and thought how good one of those hot dogs,
with a big gob of mustard on it, would be! But I never thought I'd ever
taste any in the trenches. Yet only just now I have demolished four of
them."