An Early Hero

WHEN DERNE FELL to the United Nations in the recent African campaign, the soldiers who entered the African port were following in the footsteps of an earlier victorious American general, William Eaton, Dartmouth 1790, and his small band of United States marines and soldiers. Eaton captured the city in 1805 after a grueling march around the arid African coast from Alexandria, through Matruh, up to Derne which in route and spirit parallels the advance of Montgomery and his desert forces.

The story of Eaton's campaign and later betrayal by diplomats is told by Josephine Young Case in her newly published historical novelette, Written in Sand. Well worth reading for its vivid recreation of a littleknown and unusual bit of American history, Mrs. Case's book will prove especially interesting to Dartmouth men for its able portrayal of a remarkable fellow alumnus. Eaton was already a veteran of three years' service in Washington's Continental Army when he entered Dartmouth to work his way through by teaching school in a nearby Vermont town. He graduated a Phi Beta Kappa student and later earned his M. A. Mrs. Case, as background to the General's later achievements in the Army and in the United States consular service, sets forth in an early chapter the aspirations and events of his youth and Dartmouth years.

The meat of the story is, of course, the day by day account of Eaton's advance against the city of Derne, stronghold of one of the Barbary princes whose piratical forays against American shipping in the Mediterranean and whose extortionate demands for ransom for the release of American seamen whom they had captured and enslaved were seriously damaging American interests and prestige. Eaton is revealed by Mrs. Case as a resolute, decisive leader of quick judgment and cool courage who handled the manifold problems of his mixed army of Christians and Islams with shrewdness and ingenuity. Eaton's story is an extraordinary and heroic one as told by Mrs. Case and certainly places him high up among the "Laureled Sons of Dartmouth."

An inscribed copy of Writteyi in Sand has been presented to Baker Library by Mrs. Case in honor of General Eaton. Mrs. Case is the wife of President Case of Colgate University and the daughter of Owen D. Young.