ospital, wounded in three places. They put me beside him and he
told me his story.

"It was at Belleau Wood and the Americans were plunging through to the
other side driving the Boche before them. This Jewish boy is from New
York City, and one of the favorites of the whole marine outfit. He had
gotten separated from his friends. Suddenly he was confronted by a
German captain with a belching automatic revolver. The Hun got him in
the shoulder with the first shot. Then the American made a lunge with
his bayonet, and ran the captain through the neck, but not before the
captain shot him twice through the left leg. The two fell together.
When the boy from New York came to consciousness he reached out and
there was the dead German officer lying beside him.

"The boy took off the captain's helmet first, and pulled it over to
himself. Then he took his revolver and his cartridge-belt and piled
them all in a little pile. Then he took off his shoes and his trousers
and every stitch of clothes that the officer had on, and painfully
strapped them around himself under his own blouse. After he had done
this he strapped the officer's belt on himself. When the
stretcher-bearers got to him and had taken him to a first-aid and the
nurses took his clothes off, they found the officer's outfit.

"'Say, boy, are you a walking pawnshop?' the good-natured doctor said,
and proceeded to take the souvenirs away.

"This was the military procedure, but the New York boy cried and said:
'I'll die on your hands if you take them away.'

"He was a serious case, and so they humored him and let him keep his
souvenirs, and when I saw them take him out to a base hospital this
morning, he still had them strapped to him, with a grin on his face
like a darky eating watermelon."

"What did you say his name was?" I asked.

"Rosenbaum," the boy replied. "Rosenbaum from New York."

"Say, if they'd only recruit a regiment like that from America, we'd
send the whole German army back to Berlin naked," added another soldier
who was standing near.

Then we all had another good laugh, which in its turn disturbed the old
men playing checkers on the bench under the trees back of Notre Dame.
But the soldier who told me the story added thoughtfully a truth that
every one in France knows.

"At that, I'm tellin' you, boy, there aren't any braver soldiers in the
American army than them Jewish boys from New York. I got 'o hand it to
them."

"Yes, we al