One of the most thrilling encounters I can recall is that of Captain
Woodhouse, who, accompanied by another pilot, was out over the Prussian
lines. One of the Prussians gave chase and opened fire. Woodhouse made
believe that he had been hit, and his companion brought the machine
down in a field. Immediately the Prussian, in one of the latest type
battle planes, made his landing and went over to the other machine
without bothering to cover the pilot with his revolver, Woodhouse
meanwhile lying as if dead. Suddenly he leaped up, jammed his revolver
under the Boche's nose and marched him over to the big battle plane,
got in after him and with the gun against his ribs took him back to
our lines, a prisoner. Later he returned and got the Prussian machine.
Besides the machine there were some valuable papers taken, which proved
very useful later.
In the Royal Naval Air Service there is a young lieutenant, Murray
Galbraith by name, with whom I once trained at the school at Dayton,
Ohio. Murray is a great big fellow who gave up a splendid future--his
father is one of the Canadian silver kings--to go into the flying
service. He was sent to Dunkirk to do patrol work for one of the
monitors lying off the coast. Over at Ostend the Prussians had made
their staff headquarters in a certain hotel. Galbraith spotted this
hotel and directed the shell-fire of the monitor with such accuracy
that the Prussian staff barely escaped annihilation.
On one of his flights over the Prussian lines he encountered five
machines, one of which he disposed of. He got away from the rest and,
coming on toward the Somme, ran into another group of Boches. Two of
these he put out of business with a withering fire from his Lewis gun
and then executed a loop and started earthward. His engine gave out,
but he was just high enough to glide back over their lines and then to
a point of safety near our lines.
When he landed his machine was literally shot to pieces. He received
the D. S. O. for this and, I believe, has since been decorated again.
(Retold from _New York Herald_.)
"THE LEGION OF DEATH"--WOMEN SOLDIERS ON THE FIRING-LINE
_How the Russian, Serbian, and German Women Go to War_
_Told by Officers and Eye-Witnesses from the Battlefields_
Tales of the Great War bring stories of thousands of women fighting
as soldiers in men's uniforms on all the battle-lines--in the
trenches, in the artillery and cavalry, and going "over the top" in
the bayonet charges. "The Legion of Death"--a battalion of Russian
women, under command of Vera Butchkaroff, has fought many hard
battles with the Russian Army. They are pledged to take their own
lives rather than become prisoners of the Germans, who have ravished
and attacked them. Each woman soldier carries a ration of cyanide of
potassium to be swallowed in case of capture. Mme. Colonel Koudasheva
commands the Sixth Ural Cossacks, of which one-fourth of the soldiers
are women. The Serbian, German and Austrian women are in the ranks.
Official dispatches mention them for orders of bravery. A few of
these stories are told in these pages from the following sources:
I--War Correspondent of _New York American_; II--William G. Shepherd,
War Correspondent for _United Press_; III--War Correspondent for
_Salt Lake Tribune_; IV--War Correspondent for _New York World_;
V--War Correspondent for _St. Louis Post-Dispatch_; VI--_London Daily
Telegraph_.
(Many are the tales that will be told of these women soldiers in the
"New Russia," but this is sufficient to prove that womanhood the
world over always rises to the emergency, when home and country are
in danger--EDITOR.)