AMAZING CAREER

Levin Daily Chronicle, 12 October 1918, Page 1

AMAZING CAREER

The amazing and tragic career of Private Bertrand, belonging to the infantry, is described by bis 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, Trench Colonial and Morocco Medal, tlio life-saving medal, and also a ribbon for wounds, as he has . lost one arm and one leg, and has been otherwise mutilated, besides receiving some thirty bayonet 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 war he went through the Charleroi and Marne battles. At the latter he captured two German field-kitchens, having killed the cooks and, and brought the kitchens with food ready to eat into the French lines. On the Yser and the .Somme, fighting with the British troops, he made ten German prisoners with his own hands, and won tho B.ritisti Military Medal. Hb was fiye timos taken prisoner and five tinjes escaped. After that he volunteered for the Near East, and at Monastir with one or two comrades he kept four machmeguns firing, and. held an enemy battalion at bay, with the result that 200 prisoners were made. After that, at Monastir he saved his captain and a nurse. In this affair he lost an arm, and was otherwise mutilated. ,He was< sent back to France, and fourty-eight hours after sailing his steamer wasi torpedoed, and the explosion blow off his Ho amputated the. remainder of tho limb himself with his' own knife. Ho fell into tho soa, and managed with his one arm to hang oa to a floating spar. Then, ho caught sight of the ship's skipper, who had had both,arms blown off. He managed to pick him up, and both men. remained on tho raft for three days and three nights. For this Bertrand was awarded the life-sav-ing medal, the only modal left him to win. Thi s astounding career has been accompanied by the extraordinary tragedies of his family. His father enlisted .ut 53 at the beginning of tho war, and was killed on September .2, 1914. His four brothers have all died for their country; the last surviving one had lost both arms and both legs and wag blinded, and mercifully died a few months ago. Bertrand's old mother has just died also, overcomo by of tragedies, and Bertrand remains alone of the family, with his sister, aged nine, of whom he is the sole support.