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| | CORP. DICK H. VANDE BUNTE
Serial No. 2,046,111
Hudsonville, Mich.
Enlisted at Camp Custer, April 25, 1918, and was assigned to Battery 13 in the B. C. Detail, as instrument man.
In civil life he had followed educational lines and, being mentally quick and a good mathematician, supplemented by a knowledge of telephone exchange matters, he was valuable in the branch to which he was assigned.
He took great delight in instrument work, was a hard, conscientious worker and very desirous of promotion.
VandeBunte was advanced to Corporal just after our arrival at Coetquidan, being the first man in the Battery to be promoted in France.
He performed the duties of an Instrument Sergeant and did the work well, but was not advanced to that rank, though he deserved it.
If someone had written the “Creed of the Command,” they could have saved time by making a French essayist and satirist their mouthpiece and just set forth his classifications of man as the army high ones saw him. It would read something like this:
First Class (Officers)—Those who have the ideas and are able to think; who are superior to the rest of men and not subject to the laws made for the common people.
Second Class (Non-Coms)——Men who cannot do original thinking, but who can understand and are perfectly willing to carry out the ideas of the first class.
Third Class (Buck Private)—The common herd, who are considered to be of little more consequence on earth than the lower forms of animal life.
Now VandeBunte disagreed with the theory that the great majority of men should be content to exist even as “a dog or a tree” to serve those super-ones on the misty heights—trail them or shade them—and always keep his destined place, unless struck by hydrophobia or lightning. In fact, he intimated as much in a letter, and from that time on the “heights” were worried about censoring his epistolary contributions to the “Soldier Mail.”
During the days of actual combat “Van,” as he was frequently called, assumed many hazardous undertakings, and has the distinction of making reconnaissance under the very nose and eye of the enemy.
At Pont-a-Mousson the Colonel appointed VandeBunte to special duty as brigade teacher of English. He carried on this work in the local schoolhouse, the marked results testifying to his patience and perseverance as a teacher.
He had a big heart, was generous with what he had and extremely sympathetic toward his fellow men. Corporal Sprague had a light attack of yellow jaundice and the “flu,” which gave Van an opportunity to exercise his natural instinct to minister to humanity. He and Sprague were “buddies” during the entire campaign.
He was one who had high—minded ideas of right and wrong and preserved them, and in his attitude toward life he would always be happiest in serving others and helping them up to something better. |