MEN WITH "CHARMED LIVES"

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23850, 28 December 1940, Page 2 (Supplement)

MEN WITH "CHARMED LIVES"

After Miraculous Trivial Things

By FRANK BARDON

TO have survived the Dunkirk evacuation only to meet his death during an air raid on leave, when he fell and broke his neck on entering a shelter, was the strange fate of a young private in an English county regiment. Curiously enough, many so-called "bearers of charmed lives" have come to their end by what might almost be called trivial means.

JAMES KItUCK. of Chicago, for instance, was in the Lusitania when she was torpedoed Viy a German submarine during the Great War and was-picked up in an exhausted condition. \ Itintately he met his death by drowning in eleven inches of water. He was taken ill when crossing a shallow stream near St. Charles, Illinois, collapsed and was drowned. In addition to surviving shipwreck, Mr. Krtick once fell from a third-storey window withoutbeing hurt, his fall being broken by bales of straw in a lorry standing in the street below. It is said that the death of the great Blondin, who walked across Niagara on a tight-rope and performed scores of hair-raising feats of a similar character, was hastened through his tripping over a. mat 011 the stairs of bis own bouse. Berkley, the explorer, who had braved death in countless adventures throughout the world, who bad scaled mountains previously regarded as uncliniliable, who had been captured and condemned to death by hostile tribes, shot lions and tigers and had hunted the hippopotamus, died through bloodpoisoning contracted from the scratch of a farmyard cat. Man They Could Not Kill During the Great "War there was in the Lancashire Fusiliers a young lieutenant who gained considerable fame as the bearer of a "charmed life." He escaped death so ofteu that he came to be called "the man the Germans cannot kill." It was amusing to see the way in which his runner would keep behind him like a "shadow" when be was moving about the trenches, since shells .had *-he habit of pitching everywhere

except where this young officer happened to be. He was four times wounded slightly, on the hist occasion when a shell pitched into a group of men, killing them all, but inflicting little more than a scalp wound on this ofiieer. If. bowever, there was no bullet with his name on it, there was a germ, for he succumbed to "Spanish influenza," that terrible disease .which took such grievous toll of life in the closing months of the war. The first man of "Kitchener's Army' to win the Y.C.. John Ripley, died through falling off a ladder, a sail end to one who had won distinction for courage against tremendous odds "defending a position until all bis men had been killed and he had been wounded in the head.'' Fatal Fall A very extraordinary accident was responsible for the death of Mr. Hand Herrom, a famous American mountaineer. As a member of the German Himalayan Expedition lie reached a height 'of 23,000 feet when climbing .Mount Xanga Parbat, and had conquered many great peaks in various parts of the world, being regarded as one of the three greatest mountain climbers of the day. In 1P.'12 he visited the Pyramids of Gizeh. and it was while descending the second pyramid, which is under 500 feet high, that he slipped and fell. The climb of this pyramid is not rm '- sidered anything out of the way; it is often undertaken by visitors and offers no special difficulty to middle-aged and inexperienced climbers. Yet fate had it that it should be responsible for the death of a great mountaineer. A strange fate befell Major Case, who was killed by a speeding car in the streets of New York. Major Case was the original of Captain Flagg. the "hard-boiled" marine officer of the film, "What Price Glory," and though lie was not exactly like the bombastic char-

actor dP the screen-play, ho had boon in scores of dangers and had escaped death literally dn/.eiis of times in battles and ot her advent 'ires. Hnllets and poisoned arrows, knives and explosives could not kill Major Case, but tlie mechanism of civilisation could. Tiie driver who knocked him down in New York went on without Mopping and was never identified. A very similar character to .Major Case met his death in an even more lamentable way. considering the dangerhe had escaped in the course (if an adventurous life. This was Colin Croen. who penetrated into the pygmy country of Africa and brought hack much information concerning this "little people of the trees," as well as a record of many escapes and great hardships. He had twice escaped death in shipwreck and carried two bullets in his body, one of which had been fired at hi in by a mutinous seaman during bis time at sea in his earlier days. Yet he met 'tis death through sewing. While mending his own clothes he pricked his thumb with t he needle, the point penetrating to the bone. The wound became serious, and through his run-down condition (Jreen was unable to combat the poison and eventually succumbed.