Henry Tudury Was A Fighting Man's Fighter

The tiny black diary is bound in leather brittled with age, yet the faded words scrawled more than 50 years ago are still puncuated (sp) with life. Patriotism, hope, anguish and the pain of war are bound permanently to the yellowed pages.

Army Cpl. Henry Jetton Tudury confessed to his notebook what he would not confess to the world: "I had to stay there in charge of our company and was wishing for a shell to tear me up so as to put me out of my suffering."

By the end of World War I, the Bay St. Louis soldier was among the most decorated men of the South. When Gen. Jack "Blackjack" Pershing personally pinned on the Distinguished Service Cross, he cited Tudury for extraordinary heroism in action.

"I took in the review with General Pershing on the review stand and the rest of the decorated men," Tudury wrote about his French exploits. "I was some proud."

They are simple words, sometimes gramatically incorrect, sometimes incomplete thoughts. But they are powerful.

"We were going through tortures of hell where the bloodiest battle took place. I was signal corporal in the Muse-Argonne battle having 19 runners in charge which was the backbone of the company."

"When the Argonne battle was over, two runners and myself were the only ones left."

What Tudury witnessed and felt affected the rest of his life. In later years the bottle often became his solace. His family wondered if his poor health and swollen ankles weren't due to the battlefield gassings. And he was constantly nervous.

On one back page of his diary ther is a list of wounded and killed, but its only a partial accounting of the many tragedies he refers to in his diary as a corporal in C Company, 12^th Machine Gun Battalion. His job was to deliver messages.

"I was special runner for Capt. Hoopes who got mangled by a direct hit in front of me about 10 yards. Capt. Hoopes was a brave man. He expressed himself too much and showed too much personal bravery."

Yet the qualities the writer admonished in another hero were so readily exhibited in himself. He continued to carry dispatches to machine gun batteries surrounded by the enemy, according to a 1919 news account. Wounded and gassed, he carried out his duties non-stop until he collapsed and had to be carried from the field.

He was a soldier's soldier.

After the war, Tudury bottled up his battlefield memories--which could only be uncorked by another kind of bottle. An annual exception occurred on Armistice Day when he donned his uniform, pinned on his medals and swapped war stories with other veterans.

The Tudury family only knows of his battlefield deeds through posters, citations, the diary, a few photographs and a small box of medals that were left after he died of cancer in 1952.

"We feel terrible about letting these things get into such shape," Marie Johnson attempts to straighten out a crumbling Liberty poster. "But we were real poor and just kids. We didn't know."

Mrs. Johnson and another sister Elsie Benigno live in Bay St. Louis and are two of Tudury's four daughters. They remember their father with pride.

"Dad was one of the most highly decorated soldiers to come out of Mississippi and undoubtedly the most unrecognized hero of World War I...which was what most of them were," they say.

They also remember their father with sadness. Life after war proved to be another kind of battlefield: Nervous attacks, jitters from unexpected noises, ill health and other problems lead to bad economic times and a household void of the usual childhood rantings.

"That man never complained about the pain in his later years," Mrs. Johnson recalls. "He was a brave soldier to the end of his life. I often think he was decorated in heaven, too."

Tudury's earthly medals include the Croix de Guerre, which was pinned on by French General Petain for his bravery in the second battle of the Marne. He received a Purple Heart for his injuries and numerous battle bars, as well as the combat Distinguished Service Cross given by Pershing.

His own accounts of the medal-winning heroics were sometimes expressive.

"We were doing heavy fighting when I was gassed two or three times, but stuck to my front until I ran into a gas shell. Don't know how I left the battlefield. Was taken to base hospital 46 and was so weak could not stand up."

Two weeks after the 1918 incident which garnered the service cross nomination, he was dodging shells again. But like many distinguished military careers, Tudury's record was not unblemished.

Shortly after volunteering for the Army at age 31, he went AWOL because his officers would not grant leave to get married. When he returned several days later as the husband of Zelma Bermond, his Bay St. Louis sweetheart, he was "busted" as sergeant of a mess company for the 59^th Infantry.

His lower rank to corporal was later changed to private when he shot a gun off "thinking I was at home."

Life was not easy in the muddy trenches of France. The soldier once confessed, "We had to fight the cooties and the Jerries too," and he complained of 21 days straight of no dry clothing.

His feet would swell and stretch the leather of his boots almost beyond endurance. Many of his comrades dropped from the marching lines because they could walk no farther, but still managed to find amusement in their commander's solution to "wash your feet."

There were funny times.

"Went to the English Channel on a 12 mile hike to take a bath. We were well heated up and the water was good and cold. It was some sight to see the whole battalion (800 men) on the beach naked as a new born jay bird."

Tudury could even find humor in near death.

"I was hit on the 'bean' by a head of a three inch shell I don't think it had full speed. It bent my helment and dazed me for about five minutes."

"My head stopped the helment from bending more."

Tudury recalled sleeping on a bunk in a trench dug-out when an explosion blew him out of bed. Two Frenchmen sharing the dugout thought Tudury had been killed.

"When I came to myself, I was laughing. The Frenchmen said you surely have some nerve. You are a good soldier."

He penned the Frenchmen's words into his diary. The said what he would not write about himself.