"Graduation Exercise"

There was no doubt about it--at 56, cavalry-trained Colonel Harry A. Flint was overage to command infantry in battle. Yet there he was, in France, a happy dust-caked fugitive from half a dozen cushy supply and liaison jobs that were always threatening to keep him out of combat.

In France, as in North Africa and Sicily, "Paddy" Flint's aging, horse-bowed legs sometimes let him down in battle. When they did he would sit down for a spell. His men knew, and they loved him for his nerve. It was soldier's talk that "Ike" Eisenhower, a West Point plebe when the Colonel was a first-classman, had something to do with keeping Paddy up front. The arrangement suited old Paddy right down to the ground. France, beamed the ruddy Colonel, was his "graduation exercise" as a footslogger.

On the Saint-Lo-Periers road, Paddy's outfit was held up by heavy mortar fire. Up front, as usual, the Colonel and a rifle patrol soon found the trouble. Said Paddy over the walkie-talkie: "Have spotted pillbox. Will start them cooking."

He called for a tank, rode atop it in a rain of fire as it sprayed the hedgerows. The tank driver was wounded. Paddy crawled down, went forward afoot. A sniper's bullet got him as he led his patrol into the shelter of a farmhouse.

Aid men soon came up, loaded the Colonel on a stretcher. Said a private as they started to the rear: "Remember, Paddy, you can't kill an Irishman--you can only make him mad." Colonel Flint smiled. Next day he died.

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