GENERAL AS POILU.

Press, Volume LVII, Issue 17115, 9 April 1921, Page 14

GENERAL AS POILU.

[ A "CONSCRIPT" BRITISH OFFICER. French conscripts of the 1921 class have been undergoing the ordeal in all parts of Franco of "passing the-doc-tor" and other formalities on which depend their liabilities to fight for their country in caeo of need. In this connexion the unusual spectacle was witnessed in one of the Taris town halls c*i a British General appearing before tho council of French officers whose duty it was to decide whether he was or was not fit to serve as a ''simple eoldat" in the armies of the Republic, says the Paris correspondent of tho "Morning Post." Tho reason for his appearance in such circumstances was interesting. . The officer in question was BrigadierGeneral Raymond Brutinel. General Brutinel was born in France, in the department of Aude, in 1882, and was taken to C-an&da by his parents when still a baby. There he lived' until he was eighteen years of age, when he returned to France and contracted a voluntary engagement in the French Army for a period of four years. At the end of that period he.went back *o Canada, where ho remained until the war broke out. He then presented himself at the nearest French Consulate, where he was advised, as he had neglected to keep in touch with the French mobilisation authorities, to join up with the Canadian troops. This he did, and simultaneously presented to the Army of his adopted country a fleet of some forty motor machine-gun cars. On arriving in France ho claimed the right, although serving in the British Army, to retain his French citizenship, and this he was enabled to do in virtue of a Presidential decree and other measures adopted during the war to meet such special cases. During the great conflict tins Canad-ian-Frenchman fought heroically in the North and round Amiens, and was six times mentioned in dispatches. ... He was promoted rapidly to the rank of major, and then to colonel and briga-dier-general, and was created C.8., C.M.G., D.S.O. In December, 1918, General Brutinel received the Rosette of an Officer of the Legion of Honour, and subsequently ho was awarded the Croix de Guerre. He was also awarded the Order of SS. Maurice and Laaarus of Italy. With all this his personal situation from the point of view of French law was irregular, as his service records did not show, that he. had ever passed a Military Revising Council. In order to regularise his position, General Brutinel mingled with the nondescript crew of budding young French soldiers who were waiting round the doors of the Town Hall, round which centres the Opera quarter of Paris, passed .inside when his name was called, stripj»d. to the skin at the request of doctors, and passed triumphantly through his examination for physical fitness. "Bon pour le service, mon General," said the Medicin Major with a smile, aia- he came smartly to the salute in honour of the most distinguished conscript that had ever passed through his hands.