SOLDIER'S AMAZING CAREER

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 309, 24 September 1918, Page 8

SOLDIER'S AMAZING CAREER

The amazing and tragic career of Private Bertrand, belonging to the infantry, is described by his lieutenant in the Paris "Journal." Bertrand wears the, French Legion of Honour, Military Medal, Military Cross with seven palms and five stars, British Military Medal, Belgian Military Cross, French Colonial and Morocco Medal, the life-saving medal, and also a ribbon for wounds, as he has lost ore arm and one leg, and has been otherwise mutilated, beside? receiving some thirty bavonet wounds. He is 26. He enlisted at 18, and fought in Morocco, where he saved two officers and won the Military Medal. At the outbreak of the war he went through the Charle;;oi and Marne battles. At the'latter he captured two German field-kitchens, having- killed the cooks, and brought the kitchens with food ready to »at into the French lines. On the Yser and the Sonimo, fighting with the British troops, he made- ten German prisoners with his own hands, and won the British Military Medal. Ho' was five times taken prisoner and five times escaped. After that he volunteered for the Near East, and at Monastir with one <fr two comrades he kept four machine-; guns firing, and held an enemy battalion at bay, with the result that 200 prisoners were made. After that at Monastir he saved his captain nnd a nurse. In this affair he lost an arm, and was otherwise mutilated. He was sent back to France, and forty-eight hours after sailing his steamer was torpedoed, and the explosion blew off his leg. Ho amputated tiie remainder of the limb himself with his own., knife. He fell into the sea, and managed with his one arm to hang on to a floating spar. Then ho caught. sight cif the ship's skipper, who had had both arms blown off. Ho managed to-pick him up, and both men remained on the rnft for three days and throe nights. For this Bertrand was awarded the lilVsaving medal, the only medal left him to wiiu '.Khis astounding career has been accompanied by the extraordinary tragedies of liis family. His father enlisted at 53 at the beginning of the war, and was killed or, September 2, 1914. His lour brothers have all died for their country; the last svviving one had lost both arms and both legs and was blinded, and mercifully died a few months ago. Bertrand's old mother has just died also, overcome by the succession of tragedies, and Bertrand remains alone of the family, with his sister, aged nine, of whom be is the sole support.