One of the D. S. C. Men
An Act of Heroism and Martyrdom That Hardly May Be Matched
A Distinguished Service Cross is a proud possession. It is at once a token of bravery and an evidence that bravery has been displayed in valiant service for the good or the saving of others. It implies a great risk taken, a danger faced, a sacrifice made—a something done that, however creditable to the man, is of special value because of its benefit or advantage to many besides the man. For that reason one Distinguished Service Cross differs from another in proud significance to the winner or to the relative to whom the cross comes as an after death testimony to the winner’s worth. The formal official paragraph that announces the award of the cross to this one or that one tells nothing or little of the service that gained the distinction, because the official estimate makes no discrimination between the sentimental values of the respective services, distinguished service being distinguished service.
But there are varying qualities of bravery, different kinds of incitement to heroism, different elements in the acts of sacrifice; and one might like to know the varying values of the instant motives behind the acts—say, of a man who, in the heat and excitement of an engagement, rushes through a withering fire of shell and bullet to perform a serviceable act of desperate valor, with one chance in a thousand of coming safely off; or, of a man, without the stimulus of brain aflame and with the absolute certainty of death, who unhesitatingly, immediately lays down his life for his friends. Which is the higher courage?
In the great list, the never fully-to-be-completed list of heroic deeds in the four years’ war, is there any deed more sublime in essential quality than that of Sergt. Willard D. Purdy, Company A, 127th Infantry, A. E. F.? You never heard of it? That’s the amazing thing—that this splendid exhibition of the highest character of devoted courage is hardly known at all! Really, it was so great a heroism that it seemed a commonplace in the telling. Here is the story. It reads very simply in the bald despatch of a newspaper man reporting the facts from Washington.