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Page 17
It was now that Field Marshal von Hindenburg and his staff, speeding
along the Parkway in dark grey military automobiles, witnessed a famous
act of youthful heroism. As they swung across the Plaza to turn into
Flatbush Avenue von Hindenburg ordered his chauffeur to slow up so that
he might view the Memorial Arch and the MacMonnies statues of our Civil
War heroes, and at this moment a sharp burst of rifle fire sounded across
Prospect Park.
"What is that?" asked the commander, then he ordered a staff officer to
investigate.
It appears that on this fateful morning five thousand American High
School lads, from fifteen to eighteen years of age, members of the
Athletic League of New York Public Schools, who had been trained in these
schools to shoot accurately, had answered the call for volunteers and
rallied to the defence of their city. By trolley, subway and ferry they
came from all parts of Brooklyn, Manhattan, Harlem, Staten Island and the
Bronx, eager to show what their months of work with subtarget gun
machines, practice rods and gallery shooting, also their annual match on
the Peekskill Rifle Range, would now avail against the enemy. But when
they assembled on the Prospect Parade Ground, ready to do or die, they
found that the entire supply of rifles for their use was one hundred and
twenty-five! Seventy-five Krags, thirty Springfields and one hundred and
twenty Winchesters, 22-calibre muskets--toys fit for shooting squirrels,
and only a small supply of cartridges. The rifles available were issued
to such of the boys as had won their badges of sharpshooter and marksman,
two boys being assigned to each gun, so that if one was shot the other
could go on fighting.
"It was pitiful," said General George W. Wingate, President of the
League, who was directing their movements, "to see the grief of those
brave boys as they heard the German guns approaching and realised that
they had nothing to fight with. Five thousand trained riflemen and no
rifles!"
Nearer and nearer came the flanking force of the invading host and
presently it reached the outskirts of this beautiful park, which with
hill and lake and greensward covers five hundred acres in the heart of
Brooklyn. A few boys were deployed as skirmishers along the eastern edge
of the Park, but the mass occupied hastily dug trenches near the monument
to the Maryland troops on Lookout Hill and the brass tablet that
commemorate the battle of Long Island. At these historic points for half
an hour they made a stand against a Bavarian regiment that advanced
slowly under cover of artillery fire, not realising that they were
sweeping to death a crowd of almost unarmed schoolboys.
Even so the Americans did deadly execution until their ammunition was
practically exhausted. Then, seeing the situation hopeless, the head
coaches, Emanuel Haug, John A. C. Collins, Donald D. Smith and Paul
B. Mann, called for volunteers to hold the monument with the few remaining
cartridges, while the rest of the boys retreated. Hundreds clamoured for
this desperate honour, and finally the coaches selected seventy of those
who had qualified as sharpshooters to remain and face almost certain
death, among these being: Jack Condon of the Morris High School, J.
Vernet (Manual Training), Lynn Briggs (Erasmus), Isaac Smith (Curtis),
Charles Mason (Commercial), C. Anthony (Bryant), J. Rosenfeld
(Stuyvesant), V. Doran (Flushing), M. Marnash (Eastern District), F.
Scanlon (Bushwick), Winthrop F. Foskett (De Witt Clinton), and Richard
Humphries (Jamaica).
Such was the situation when Field Marshal von Hindenburg dashed up in his
motor car. Seventy young American patriots on top of Lookout Hill, with
their last rounds of toy ammunition, were holding back a German regiment
while their comrades fled for their lives. And surely they would have
been a martyred seventy, since the Bavarians were about to charge in full
force, had not von Hindenburg taken in the situation at a glance and
shouted:
"Halt! It is not fitting that a German regiment shall use its strength
against a handful of boys. Let them guard their monument! March on!"
Meantime, to the east and north of the city the battle raged and terror
spread among the populace. All eyes were fixed on New York as a haven of
refuge and, by the bridge, ferry and tunnel, hundreds of thousands made
their escape from Brooklyn.
The three great bridges stretching their giant black arms across the
river were literally packed with people--fathers, mothers, children, all
on foot, for the trolleys were hopelessly blocked. A man told me
afterwards that it took him seven hours to cross with his wife and their
two little girls.
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