BRAVERY.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 220, 3 May 1917, Page 6

BRAVERY.

A MAN WHO WAS AFRAID

“Standing in front of us 111 tlio trench, some ten feet away, I saw a ■bearded soldier with the stripes of A sergeant and the ribbon of the Medaille Militaire —the highest -honour of any French soldier, from ranking general down, can win—and the Croix de Guerre with two palms, meaning that he had been mentioned twice for conspicuous bravery in the general orders of the army. Despite his heard, he was a young man well under 30, and he stood with a quiet air of confidence and looked at us with a certain amusement.”

The psychology of fear is one of the strangest mysteries of the moment, and the story told by Mr, Fred D. Pitney in the New York Tribune of the man described above has an illumination entirely its own. Leon Barbesse was called to the colours at the outbreak of war, but he was soon sent home owing to feeble lungs. Suffering from an innate terror of the battlefield, he at first cherished the fact that he did not have to fight. Soon, however, Leon grew ashamed. His shame became torture, and finally he volunteered.

“God, what a struggle that was! I walked the road to the caserne with the sweat running off me. For a year I had dreamed nightly of the shells. I had heard of them. They had fallen around me. I had been wounded. I had felt the impact of the steel on my yielding flesh. For a year I had spent my days trying to hide my terror from my wife, my friends, ana my neighbours. I went at last because I could not stand the torture of failing to co my duty. No one else knew. They sent me to Verdun, It was in the very midst ot‘ the German attack On the left bank of the Meuse. I had been drafted into a veteran regiment with a lot of others to help fill up the gaps, and I joined just in time to go in the front line. UNABLE' TO SPEAK. “Everything I did was mechanical. We were called before daylight; we had a cup of coffee; we were marching along 'the road. I had managed it up to then without giving myself aw’ay. True, I talked little to my comrades, and probably that saved me. But the morning we marched to the front! What saved me then I don’t know, except possibly because I said nothing. I was unable to speak. I was numb with fear. I was sick. My stomach turned. I walked with my

•Head down, and my feet dragged like great weights. We had been marching nearly two hours when I heard my first shell. There was a long, thin

whine some place in the air. It was a new sound, and it was so strange to me that I raised my head for the first time since we started on the march. The man next to me laughed.

“‘A shell,’ he said. “I looked all around me. I tried to stop to see the path of that queer whine, but the man behind me prodded me on. Several of them laughed. “ ‘You will hear plenty more,” they said.

thought I was eager ■ for

them. It was as though I were studying some other man, There was the me who was afraid and knew it, and the me who watched to see how afraid I was. I tried to follow the course of every shell. My head was continually twisting. I jumped at every explosion. I could not control the muscles of my back and shoulders. But I stepped out of the line and walked a little way into the field, towards the shells. I wanted to see if I could do it. I got close enough so that I could hear a piece of shell whizz past my ear. Then I waited for another piece It was a hard job, but I waited, leaning on my rifle and looking at the ground a little way in front of me, where the last shell had exploded. If I had moved my eyes from that spot I could not have stayed. Not until the third one came did I hoar another piece of shell. The ethers had struck to far to one side. CALL FOR VOLUNTEERS. “There was the time when it became necessary to take, a message from our support trenches to our advanced lines in the Bois des Corbeaux. There was a barrage to be crossed, and volunteers were called for. I was chosen.

‘“Have you ever seen an artillery barrage? You can walk up to it and draw a line with a surveyor’s chain on the ground, marking exactly the

limit where the shells fall, and all beyond that line will be a mass of boiling earth, like waves in a storm dashing cn a rocky coast. I came within 50 yards of such a barrage, and stopped to watch it and to nrrk out a path. B'ut no path was por hie. No sooner was one chosen thr - it was wiped out, all the little 1 udmarks Zone, the whole face of tlm ground changed by a new rain of s’ dls. My heart sank. My stomach went suddenly empty. I knew that I had reached the limit beyond' which i could not go. I had found the point where my fear was greater than my

duty. I lay flat down on the earth. Ido not know how long I lay. I thought of nothing. There was only a horrible blank fear. “Then I found that unconsciously I was digging my fingers into the ground, clutching the roots of grass, and dragging myself into the barrage. I might as well have been dragging myself the other way, but I had lain down with my face towards my duty. DASHED FORWARD.

“When I made that discovery I got to my feet and stood upright for a second, not more, only time to say T must not give myself time to think,’ and dashed forward into the exploding shells. I floundered blindly into the raw earth and fell again on my face. “This time my mind was working. There was only one thing for me to do, and I knew it. That was to go on. I crawled forward on my hands and knees. I could not stand; it would be certain death. Twenty times I was knocked flat, my wind gone, by the explosion of a shell almost beside me, but I crawled on. I did not know if I had been hit. I thought I had. Two hundred yards I crawled through the barrage and then reached our lines. They gave me the Medaille Militaire for that.”

Leon was last seen in Paris. His left sleeve was pinned across his breast and above it were his three medals, from left to right the Croix de Guerre, now with three palms; the Medaille Militaire, and the Legion d’Honneur. He was waiting for the train to take him home to the centre of France, to his wife and boy.

“I can tell them now that I was afraid,” he said.