The Days of a Man 1917 



nearer to me personally than any of the others. Yet 

 in singling them out for affectionate memorial, I 

 should like to feel that in some sense I pay my tribute 

 to all ! 



Lieutenant Fergusson, the first from Stanford to 

 fa\\, I have already mentioned in connection with 

 my visit at his home in 1913. In 1914, after two years' 

 special study in Dundee, Freiburg, and Munich, he 

 took his medical degree at Baltimore. When war 

 broke out he left America for the Netley Base Hos- 

 pital at Liverpool, but soon joined the fighting forces. 

 "Older men," he explained in a letter to Dr. Fair- 

 clough, his uncle, "can do this work as well as I, and 

 my country needs more soldiers." He then enlisted 

 in the famous Black Watch, which had been almost 

 wiped out in the early stages of the war. In 1915 he 

 received a second lieutenant's commission and went 

 to France. Once wounded and invalided home, he 

 returned to the front, where he was killed July 14, 

 1916, while leading a charge at Longueval. To his 

 mother the battalion major wrote that James's men 

 "would have followed him into Hell itself. His name 

 in the regiment was 'Fearless Fergusson.' 5 And his 

 captain said: 



I took your son out with me the night before the battle and 

 pointed out the position we hoped to take. I said to him: 

 "Yours will be the leading platoon." He replied: "Thank you, 

 sir. It is a great honor, and I shall be the first man over the 

 parapet." And he was. He had gained his objective, when he 

 was shot in the head. 



Clifford Lieutenant Kimber, of the Stanford class of 1918, 

 volunteered in April, 1917, under the auspices of the 

 "Friends of France," as a member of the American 

 Ambulance Corps, and had the honor of carrying the 



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