At Plattsburg Part 20

DEAR MOTHER:--

We were up today as usual at half past five, those who were lucky rising a little earlier for more comfortable dressing. And yet, after all, ten minutes is enough for those few observances which may be dignified with the name of our toilet. The pint and a half in the canteens allows us a scrub of the teeth, and a rinsing of the face and hands--no more, especially if we are to have anything to drink on the day's march, for the morning, with an empty water-b.u.t.t, is no time to replenish the supply. Pickle, having a budding mustache, carries a pocket mirror and comb, and so can arrange his hair; but the rest are usually satisfied with a hasty smoothing with the hands--and since the hat goes on at once and stays on, why not? Because of the cold, all sleep in their stockings, which saves morning time, besides preventing bother in the lacing of the trousers. (It is at night and at the swim that stockings are changed.) Thus in the morning only the shoes and the leggings must go on; we are already in our sweaters, and so are soon prepared for the first formation. The cartridge-belt and rifle are dragged out from the straw and laid ready in case they are called for; then one can proceed with packing the squad-bag, and with striking the tent and separating the shelter-halves. Old Bann is a wise one; he always begins by securing his five tent-pins, and so leaves to me the responsibility of rummaging out the remaining five, of which one always dodges me for a while.

The second call sounds, to be followed by the first sergeant's whistle.

"Corporals, get your men out! Belts and rifles!" There is s.n.a.t.c.hing up and buckling, then there is scientific delay over packing, with eye and ear to the exhortations of sergeants and squad leaders; but at last even the slowest are on their way to the head of the street to take their places. The corporals are calling the numbers of their squads, "Six!"

"Nine!" "Twelve!" and with anxious eyes are watching for their belated men. The line forms: there is a gap here for a smoking fire, and other gaps that mean absentees. Rear-rank men step forward to fill the places of their file-leaders, and as the a.s.sembly sounds the front-rank men are glad to slip, un.o.bserved, into the vacant s.p.a.ces in the rear.

"Report!"--"First squad, present." "Second squad, private Smith absent."

Smith, hurrying up, curses under his breath. "Police duty today," he knows, and makes a grimace at private Brown, who has found his place in the fourth squad just in time.

Once the reports are in, the first sergeant orders "Inspection--Harms!"

With a rattle the guns are tossed up and opened; with another rattle, at the next command, they are closed and snapped. The sergeant salutes the waiting lieutenant, whose commonest proceeding, now on the hike, is to warn us of an early start. Then perhaps he orders "Stack arms!" and we grumble. A nuisance to have, in the company street, a line of stacks through which we may not pa.s.s. Then, dismissed, we return to our packing, always with an eye to the forming of a line at the cook tent. For no one wants to be late in that line, yet all wish to get forward with the packing. There is, on these cold mornings, another consideration: it is pleasantest to eat breakfast in sweaters, which we know must be discarded for the march. If the officers or sergeants come with "Hurry up those blanket-rolls!" off the sweaters must come, and the rolls are made.

Otherwise, at the mess-call utensils are s.n.a.t.c.hed up, and the men hurry to the head of the company street, to form the double line, and to be glad of the extra comfort that the sweaters give.

The meal disposed of and the meat-cans washed (or rather rinsed) the remaining packing is quickly finished. The rolls are made, the squad-bags are stuffed full, and both are carried to the trucks. The packs are made, and the belts, heavy with the fresh ammunition that has just been handed out, are hooked to them. A swing, a boost, a hitch or two, and our pappooses, our constant companions, are with us till we make camp, seven hours or more later. Then the whole company street is policed, and the hay piled in big c.o.c.ks on which, in the early sun, the men loll during the last few minutes before the bugle calls.

Our second battalion was first in ranks this morning, drawn close together to hear the words of the major. There was to be, he presumed, a rencounter, or meeting engagement; he merely had sealed orders, to be opened at a certain spot on the route. Our battalion was to start first; he advised all officers to study the terrain as we pa.s.sed along. And then we were off, while the first battalion was decorating its hats with white, and jeering at us as future enemies.

The trucks were a mile ahead of us; we saw the dotted line of their khaki tops marking the road that led out of the high basin in which lay the camp. As we too climbed the steady slope to the southeast we were willing to leave the dreariness of its unkept farms and get among the woods. Lyon Mountain, on the west, slowly drew its colored bulk behind the shoulder of a nearer hill while we came closer and closer among the maples. The shallow notch over which we pa.s.sed was high and open; nothing overhung us, but the tawny tapestry of the woods ran up gentle slopes to the right and left, and the few evidences of farming, save for the all-present wire fences, faded quite away. The slope grew stiffer, but there was no slackening of pace. Heads bent low, chests began to labor, and the sweat rolled down. A welcome rest relieved us; then up we started and went on again, at each change of grade looking for the downward turn, and each time disappointed till--ah, there was a corner, and on the slope beyond we saw the column descending amid dust. Then we too turned the corner, and faced the view.

It was not wide, for the woods by the roadside (brilliant in the sun on the right, subdued in the, shade on the left) limited it to a V. Below was the valley, and beyond and above it, piling ridge on ridge, rose the hills, climbing to the shaded blue peak that loomed in the very middle.

It was a picture, striking and complete.

In vain I looked for the lake, which in all our earlier landscapes showed between us and the hills. Then a reference to the sun showed that I was still looking in a southerly direction. Further, this great hill, so high and clear, was both taller and nearer than the Green Mountains could be.

Someone behind me said "Whiteface," and I knew that I was looking straight toward the heart of the Adirondacks.

Again we made a turn, and the view broadened out. To the east the whole landscape sloped toward the sun, against whose rays the brilliance of the woods faded, though still amid the green one could see, to north or to south, the yellow, the orange, or the dotted scarlet of the flaming maples. The easterly view was less distinct; in the distant blue the hills flattened to a fairly low horizon.

But while, still marching, I idly gazed, my eye was caught by an odd trick of the sun which, now at nine o'clock well on its upward way, yet seemed to illuminate the bottom of a cloud that hung near the sky line.

It was a sunset effect impossible by day, but there was the distinctly gleaming band. And then I knew--Champlain! It was the lake, turning faintly silver further north or further south. What I had thought to be a cloud was distant haze. And above it hung, at first unnoticed, the faint blue silhouettes of Mansfield and its neighbor peaks.

As we marched down the slope my neighbors, mindful of what was to come, said "Gee! Suppose we are to climb up this again?" But apprehension was soon lost in the interest of the town we now entered, whose great buildings (in which each squad threatened to leave its most obstreperous member) had been visible for some distance. Dannemora seems to be a town whose prosperity, in this out of the way place, depends solely upon the great prison that stands in its midst. We marched along beneath the huge wall that forms one side of the main street; it rose in places fifteen feet above our heads. Dust! dust! A school was let out; its scholars came streaming uphill to watch us, and to tag along beside us even after we had turned away from the great hospital of the prison, and were once more amid farms. Other school children were waiting for us along the road. We saw very little of the buzzard in this population; they handed or threw us apples, and the boys even undertook to fill canteens--the same old trick which the officers failed to detect.

Still we tramped on amid the dust which rose around us; if Sat.u.r.day's was the wet hike, this was the dusty one. As we neared a crossroad we were given the command "Attention!" So we came to the right shoulder and straightened our ranks, that we might look better as we pa.s.sed the General. Another quarter mile (we were an hour beyond Dannemora now) and the familiar motorcyclist, our messenger in so many skirmishes, darted by us to reach the captain. We grunted. And then "Squads left--march, company--halt!" We found ourselves facing the wall of bushes. "Prepare to load!" Who, we wondered, would accidentally fire now? Ah, the distant pop was from the next company, and we heard its men angrily jeering their clumsy mate.

Squads-left again, and now we were starting back on the way that we had come. Uphill of course, but we feared that worse was to follow, as we remembered the ridge that we pa.s.sed some little distance back, and recalled the advantages it offered for defence. To be sure, J Company was now nearest it and should secure it, if the enemy were not too close. But a burst of shooting, not very far away, apprised us that they were already at hand. And then came the expected order, "Double time!"

The pace in double time, say the regulations, is thirty-six inches long; the cadence is at the rate of one hundred and eighty steps a minute. It is not a run. I have heard the captain call back a lieutenant and his platoon: "I didn't say Run; I said Double time!"--"An easy run," says the little blue book. An easy run! With eighteen pounds on the back, and eight around the waist, and another nine in the hand--an easy run! Oh, in that dust, and up that slope, it was pound, pound, pound, till my heart thumped like the engine of a little Ford at high gear on a stiff grade, and my knees (how well the ancients knew the importance of those joints!) were like lead. The breath was failing, failing--till at last in a burst of relief I got my second wind. But poor Corder! Three times, as I watched him laboring in front of me, he flagged. Three times he visibly mustered his powers and pounded on. The fourth time he was spent. He had already stepped out of the column, to let us pa.s.s him, when I heard the welcome whistle. "Halt!" Corder had strength to take his place again, we were hustled into the ditch for cover, and I found a grateful position on the ground. There was no talk; everyone was too busy with a shortness of breath.

The firing in our front was now more systematic, and was spreading to the left. It was not long before we were ordered to the right of the road, and marching in the ditch, went forward. Then double time again, for a short distance, and the line swung out into the road as it turned to the right into a field. Suddenly there was the major, ordering us back into the ditch, and his eye met mine in the midst of one of his remonstrances.

"The road is always unsafe!" Look to yourself, major, I thought, as obediently I ducked aside and left him in the position of danger. A ploughed field brought us to a walk; we climbed a stiff ascent, then found ourselves facing a nasty bit of thick wood, through which we were ordered in squad columns. Down a slope and across a gully and up again; then we went through more open country, but still among trees. Finally we aligned ourselves behind the top of a little rise, where we might comfortably sit or kneel, having plenty of cover behind logs or stones.

The enemy that tried to cross the ravine below us would have a surprise.

There followed all the confusion of an attack in the woods. We heard the enemy coming, saw at length the white hat-bands, opened fire, and heard his heavy answer. The firing slackened on our front, strengthened on our right, and our platoon was again detached, to take care of this new danger. As we waited at the edge of a wood, while the major held us for orders, a half-grown robin, with speckled breast, nervously flew about us as if he wished to take refuge from the noises that distracted him. Into the underbrush we plunged again, were posted here, and fired; were sent there, and fired again; were hurried at the double to the flank, where I, coming behind the rest, was held by the captain and posted with a rear-guard, to fire upon the enemy if he appeared across a little clearing. It was evident that the enemy's intentions could not be guessed in advance. I heard very rapid firing at my back, and a burst of cheering. Then the bugle blew, and the whistles sounded everywhere through the wood. Of the enemy I had had few glimpses, and in general I realized that the confusion had been extreme.

As I plodded through underbrush to rejoin my company, I came across some white-banded fellows who, with fixed bayonets and heavy breathing, had evidently just been charging. Meeting presently a member of our company, I asked him what had taken place in this part of the encounter. "Oh, those fellows? You never saw anything so foolish. They wandered out from the woods and fixed bayonets in the open, and we fired at them for five minutes, at a hundred and fifty yards, before they began their charge. Of course they stopped at fifty yards from us, the rule, you know. Then our lieutenant asked theirs what his men wore to make them bullet-proof, and we hoped there would be some back talk, for the other fellow was mad.

Pendleton's tongue does cut. But an umpire came and ruled them out, and we're sure of them, anyway."

Well, fighting in the woods is "impossible," as the major explained to us later at conference. Apparently if it must be, it must, but there can be very little science in it. At the conference our officers explained what had happened at different parts of our line, and we were all sure that we had won. But I noticed that the two battalions held their conferences separately, and concluded that the same consoling deduction was being made at the other discussion. Yet one idea must have fixed itself in the mind of every thinking man there: we were too green, and some of our platoon-leaders were too green, for effective work under such circ.u.mstances. Once or twice on our skirmishes we have known that we did well, and after the wet fight toward Cherubusco our captain ventured the statement that he could make us soldiers in six months; but today I think he would have doubled the period, for it was plain that a veteran enemy determined to push his lines forward would have made short work of us in our confusion.

One thing I learned which I shall remember to my private advantage. The next time I find myself firing from behind a snake fence I shall not crowd forward into one of the corners. For that brings one's ears even with the muzzles of the rifles to the right and left, and the result is deafening.

We had delighted the foot-loose population of Dannemora, and perhaps had tantalized the poor fellows behind the bars; certainly we gave profitable employment to a score of professional buzzards, who turned up with their bags to search the woods where we had been firing. As for ourselves, we were soon on the road again and hiking in the dust, through country which was still too deserted and unkempt, with its brush pastures and scattered log houses, for the taste of a New Englander. At dips and turns of the road we saw the drab column winding before us; we pa.s.sed through straggling Cadyville and came at last to the unwelcome macadam. Our feet, used to the gravel roads, found this unyielding surface tire us more in a mile than the other could do in five. I admit that I was thoroughly glad when at last we saw the camping ground, turned aside into the green gra.s.s, and pitched our tents. Some strap of the pack having slipped, the weight had irked me more in the last hour than it had done in all the nine days of the hike, and it was with great relief that I swung it from my shoulders.

Another proof of the mathematical formula that Food Indulgence equals Indigestion. A gormandizer from a neighboring squad has lately been very savage on account of dyspepsia. Yesterday he crawled out of bed with the sourest expression and would scarcely respond to greetings, spoke of his stomach, and intimated that he would ask to ride with the baggage. Yet he marched with us, preserving so gloomy a silence that Corder, experimenting, hailed him four times before he would answer. Then he vouchsafed, "Every step I take my stomach hurts me," and so he stalked on, alone amid the jollity of the marching column. We had reached camp, and were pitching tents, when I heard his bunkie demanding his whereabouts. He had disappeared, leaving his mate to do his work. But before long I heard his voice, entirely bright and happy, say "Sixty cents!" and there he stood in the midst of his squad, triumphantly holding up a big mince pie.

Today the poor man was down again, wrapped in gloom. Again he threatened to ask to ride, but again he managed to subdue his pains. Said I, "I suppose that pie is paying you back." He answered, "You don't understand.

I have to buy those things because they give us so little sweet in our diet." One has to respect misery, however caused, and I bothered him no more.

But David has managed to subdue Pickle, who goes no longer to the buzzards' counters, and though he complains that the struggle is hard, he admits that the results pay. No more pains for him. So yesterday, though at the sight of the crisp pie Pickle's eye wandered toward the pastry booth outside the gate, when he caught David's warning glance he controlled himself and went on with his work.

It was here at Cadyville that, for the first time since leaving Plattsburg, we were able to have a real swim, or rather (since the water was like ice) we found depth enough and room enough for all. Over a meadow and down a bluff a path led from camp to a big paper mill which stood above a gorge of the Saranac River. The huge pile of pulp, at which men were picking and prying with pickaxe and canthook, ought to be a gold mine in these days of high prices of paper. Beyond was the dam, higher than a house on its clear side and (so we were told) of equal depth on the other. Along the sides of the big basin there was room for the whole regiment; and the dive from the dam--how the men yelled when their heads came out, and how they swam to get ash.o.r.e again!

Our last afternoon in camp! We felt that we had earned repose after a day's hard work--a month's hard work! No more skirmishing among rocks, stumps, and barbed wire; no more firing of the gun, and no more cleaning of it. As we wished to hand the guns back in good condition, and as most of our patches and oil had given out, many of us took the friendly offers of the regulars (cavalrymen, bandsmen, cooks) who did the best business, working in pairs, that they had yet done. Even David relaxed the severity of his self-discipline, and handed out his gun and his quarter-dollar. We lolled, we talked thoughtfully, we already regretted. Men exchanged addresses, and made appointments for the distant future. I noticed that the squad kept pretty close together, as if knowing that soon it must separate for good. And now, rather seriously, the men are getting ready for the last Retreat.

(_Evening._)

We have had our final conference, in a little amphitheatre at one side of the camp. As the dusk fell the General talked to us for the last time. He took up the subject of preparedness where he left it yesterday--what are we to do to face an emergency, all our present methods failing, the emergency, if it comes, sure to be so frightful? The old volunteer system has broken down in each of our wars--the Revolutionary, the war of 1812, the Mexican, the Civil. We have seen it, before our eyes, break down in England now. The volunteer system is unfair--why should one man fight for another equally fit? It is therefore undemocratic. There is only one thing left, universal training for all young men, and conscription in war of all of military age.

Two years ago I should have recoiled from this; a year ago I should have shaken my head doubtfully. Today I see with relief that there is this system to save us at need. It will save us whether there is war or, as we all hope, peace. You know how I have worried over our national future with this immense immigration, which yearly is less a.s.similated. The one thing which will teach the young immigrant American ideals and loyalty to his new flag, is service with all other young men for the same great purpose. How can they stand nightly at Retreat before the flag, hear the "Star Spangled Banner" played, salute the last sight of the colors--how can they do this for but a single month and not feel pledged forever to defend the old flag? I tell you, mother, when I realized tonight that this was our last Retreat something gripped my throat and brought the water to my eyes. Nor was I the only one, to judge from what I saw about me.

So when the General asked us, as I suppose he has asked previous regiments, to vote in favor of universal training, every man of us shouted Ay!

I have asked some of the squad if they mean to come again next year, in case the universal training movement does not put the training camps out of business. The answer is Yes, if they can get away again. Knudsen means to be in the cavalry; he would have gone with them this year if the regulations had not required first a period with the infantry. David I have not asked yet; but Corder will come back in spite of his years. "But I must go with the quartermaster's department," he said; and when I asked why: "It's plain enough that if I can't keep up in a charge I ought to go where I can be of real use. Now nothing is more important than the Q. M.

department, and trained men are needed there as well as anywhere else. So that's my job in the next camp." It's plain he'd rather march in the ranks, but he will change rather than leave the preparedness movement to get along without him.

During the afternoon there had been piled truckload after truckload of cordwood at the end of the company streets. As the conference broke up someone lighted the heap, and soon the flames, before the wind, were leaping forty feet in the air. I took your latest letter from my pocket and could clearly read it, though at a hundred and fifty yards' distance.

With shouts the crowd hastened to the fire, and company after company, each in a long line of men cheering for their officers, took its turn in a snake-dance around the blaze. As the bonfire dwindled to an immense heap of glowing coals, a deep semi-circle gathered, sitting above it on the hill, sang the songs of the hike, and called for solos from favorite singers. Chums walked up and down near the fire, or in the further darkness lay in front of tents and talked plans. Little groups gathered here or there, then restlessly broke up and shifted as men sought acquaintances for a last word that might be impossible tomorrow. In this shifting kaleidoscope of men I was glad to find Hale, cured of his bronchitis, and with a tale of how at the hospital they locked up the men's clothes, as the only way of preventing them from escaping too soon and rejoining the hike. The camp has been one last buzz of personal talks, excited, pensive, or regretful.

But all is quieting now, and I am sleepy. Love, much love, from

d.i.c.k.

FROM PRIVATE SAMUEL PICKLE TO HIS BROTHER

[Without date, but evidently of the same evening.]

DEAR OLD MAN:--

You'll see me soon, perhaps sooner than you want. But there's no help for it; I shall be turned out of here. Otherwise I should stay a month longer. Never had such a good time in my life. Oh, yes, I remember I've grumbled some; and I've lost six pounds and worn out two pairs of shoes.

Never put your shoes near the fire or on a stove. But for hardening of the muscles and toughening of the hide, give me Plattsburg. If you have any complaints to make to me at any time, think well of them beforehand.

Our David that I've told you about, he turns out to be a true sport after all. Marches with the best of us, lives as dirty as we, enjoys it all.

The young cuss, I've grown fond of him. What do you think his latest is?

He's kept hammering at me till he's made me stop buying pies and things!

Good for the pocket-book, but particularly good for my little insides.