Wins French Bride in 13 Minutes

1920

Yank Voted Speed Demon of A. E. F.

SOMERSWORTH, N. H. — Paul J. St. Jean, wounded hero of this town, has returned with his French bride whom he met for fifteen minutes in Angouleme, France, while on his way to the front in 1918, wooed by mail and made a special trip to her home to marry.

Now the citizens of this ordinarily quiet village vote unanimously that Jean can claim the A. E. F. record for a speedy courtship. And Jean says nothing. His record speaks for itself.

Mrs. Paul J. St. Jean has settled down to learn the English language.

Private Paul J. St. Jean left Somersworth in 1917 with the Yankee Division for France. He went thru every battle from the engagement at Seicheprey to Chateau Thierry, where he was felled with a machine gun bullet in the first American push. Out of the fighting, he was invalided to Camp Hospital 5, near Bordeaux. For over two months he hovered between death and life, and on Sept. 29th left again for the front to join his division.

Could Speak Language.

Then Cupid got in his work. While serenely traveling by train at the rate of three knots an hour, the French Limited stopped at the town of Angouleme. On the platform watching the train pull in were three French mademoiselles. Jean had the advantage. He was the only doughboy on the limited that knew French without the aid of a "French Made Easy" book, so he engaged the young women in conversation.

Two of the girls talked. The other didn't. Thruout the fifteen minutes that the train waited, a quiet French maiden of 16 summers hung back, saying nothing but thinking a whole lot. That young lady is now Mrs. Jean.

Jean, like any enterprising Yank, took their addresses and corresponded from the front. The shy young miss, whose name was Gabrielle Deleichelle, and whose father was at the front during the war, made it known to Jean thru her sisters' letter that she wanted to write.

Kept Writing to Girl.

The soldier came home with his division and started on a course of vocational training in New York. Altho unable to visit his young friend on his way home, he kept up the correspondence, which grew more interesting with each succeeding letter. In June, 1919, the obvious happened. They became engaged with the aid of a 5-cent stamp and several pages of uncensored French.

The vocational training complete, on April 10th of this year, the Yankee hero sailed from New York, arrived at Angouleme, and on May 17th married the young lady who had kept the postmasters at Somersworth and Angouleme busy for nearly two years.

Mr. and Mrs. Jean then came home. They visited New York and spent three days in Boston. But the big cities displeased Mrs. Jean. She liked the quietude of country places like Somersworth, and So they arrived home on her eighteenth birthday.

Mrs. Jean admires her soldier husband, is amazed at the progressiveness of America, but says with a far-away look: "I will always love my old France and expect to go back some day," and Mr. Jean, who is of French descent himself, is quite willing to go, too.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Aug. 7, 1920, p. 1.