Daily Capital Journal

SOLDIERS WHO FALL IN WAR WILL BE BURIED IN FRANCE
By J. W. Pegler
(United Press Staff Correspondent.)
With the American Expeditionary Army, France, Jan. 15.-(By Mail.)-
Some one who knows should have tipped off the Purple Cross that it can't be done. The campaign of that organization aiming to transport back home the bodies of soldiers killed in action is causing nothing but regret in the Army.

The Army, the backbone and substance of the Army, is sorry the gruesome side of this fierce war business has been shown in such cruel detail to his family back home. Mother and Dad are worried enough anyway.

The absolute proven futility of the proposition makes Army people---of officers and men-rather impatient at the well-meant propaganda of the Purple Cross.

The working plan is understood to be this: To provide a corps of men, physically unfit for fighting but brave enough to face shell-fire, who will collect the dead from hell-swept battlefields and from No-Man's Land.

To embalm the bodies and send them home without cost to the individual families.

It is understood that the Purple Cross wants either a government subsidy or permission to raise a fund such as the Y. M. C. A. fund. Also the organization wants official army rank for its officers.

The subsidy or fund and the rank for officers would come anyway if the big plan of the Purple Cross were recognized. But the scheme looks like a loser if sentiment among the people most concerned in its operation will have any weight in the matter.

First of all it is a terrible task to collect and evacuate the suffering wounded. In the British army the Medical Corps stretcher bearers have a greater per cent casualties than any other branch.

It would be a waste of splendid man-power to expose such brave men to such a great danger in order to collect men to do the work at all. And if they're strong enough, armed with their unselfish courage, why shouldn't they bring in the living who still have a chance to pull through? It may sound callous, but in the military mind such a labor as the Purple Cross wants to perform is regarded as unnecessary.

From a sentimental standpoint the idea doesn't appeal to our soldiers at all.

A Toledo boy-gas expert now; civilian three months ago-summed up the soldier's view of the sentiments involved. Said he:

"Anyway, I don't want to be sent home if anything happens to me. Bury me where I fall. It will be a blow to my mother but she will always be proud of me and that pride will help her to get over the shock.

"Now, if that's the case, why should someone carry me home after about six weeks and make my mother go through it all again!"