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manner of their son’s death when he was struck by a shell fragment just as they backed an ambulance of the Norton-Harjes corps up to the abris in the communicating trenches to receive the load of French wounded and dying.
And when he was through and the last hushed query had been put by the dead ambulance driver’s parents, Sylvester drew from his pocket a little packet which he had carefully guarded on his voyage across the sea. Hall’s mother opened it tenderly and with mingled tears of sorrow and joy drew forth a glittering Croix de Guerre conferred by the French government on her boy for valor.
There were other little souvenirs in the package, the beginning of a collection which young Hill started when he first went to Europe, and which he had hoped to bring back with him after the war to show to his friends. All forenoon, Sylvester spent at the Hall home he told of the many incidents and experiences which he, Robert and other ambulance drivers of the Norton-Harjes corps had met in France.
Then he took his leave to visit the campus of the University of Minnesota, where he was a student before going to France. To his friends who met him there and at the Delta Kappa Epsilon house, of which fraternity he is a member, he declared his intention of going back to France as an aviator as soon as the wounds he received permit him. The shell which killed young Hall and wounded him, he said, was fired by the Germans in their recent heavy counter-assaults.
It was scarcely daylight and the fighting of the day had not yet begun in earnest. The German Batteries had been silent all night, and when they started firing the first shell struck directly in the abris. Hall fell dead with a fragment of the shell lodged in his skull. The ambulance was demolished and Sylvester, who was close by, fell wounded in many places – hip, back, and leg. Many of the blesses also were killed. Sylvester limps from his wounds and has to carry a cane, but he is proud of the Croix de Guerre which was pinned on his breast for valor. Although the entire division was cited for the decoration, he was personally honored. Sylvester was in a French hospital until about a month ago, when he started his return trip.
"The fighting on the west front is a hopeless deadlock" he declared. "All France is praying that America will turn the fighting conclusively in the favor of the Allies. They were jubilant when America entered the war. "The spirit of the French is a wonderful thing. When one sees men 50 and 55 years old, willing risking their lives as stretcher bearers and enduring all sorts of privations with a smile, and when one catches the "heads up" spirit of the poilus in the trenches, it makes him want to pitch in and help them.
"The French morale is performing no small service for the Allies. Asked whether ambulance driving is a thrilling occupation, he said, "Many people have the impression that driving an ambulance is merely transporting wounded soldiers from one hospital to another. A driver who is detailed to work near the front line trenches, as we were, gets excitement enough." He has a souvenir of his service, a watch-shaped cigarette lighter, made for him
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* SOURCE: Manzow, Ron (compiler), "The Sylvester Family of Plainview, Minnesota - a collection of information taken from the Plainview News, other newspapers, letters, and diaries beginning in 1884": Plainview Area History Center, 40 4th St. S.W., Plainview, MN 55964. Compiled in 2001.
NOTE: from Ron Manzow, December 2001: "Feel free to reproduce the pages for anyone who wants a copy. It was
compiled to be shared... All I ask is that they consider sending a check to the [Plainview Area] History Center to help us out. That
should be enough."
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