back that same afternoon – Chuck sworn in and assigned to the same company (C
company, 2nd regiment) Tom was in, and with similar delay time. So Chuck and I went
to another (fairly) safe spot, and I told him goodbye again, and again the miracle
overtook me.
No, I did not decide I was in love with him, after all. Enough men had had me by
then that I was not inclined to mistake a hearty orgasm for eternal love. But it was
nice that they happened since I intended to tell Chuck goodbye as often and as
emphatically as possible, come what may. And did, right up to the day, a week later,
when it really was goodbye.
Chuck never came back. No, he was not killed in action; he never got out of
Chickamauga Park, Georgia. It was the fever, whether malaria or yellow jack, I’m not
sure. Or it could have been typhoid. Five times as many died of the fevers as were
lost in combat. They are heroes, too. Well, aren’t they? They volunteered; they were
willing to fight… and they wouldn’t have caught the fever if they had hung back,
refused to answer the call.
I’ve got to drag out that soap box again. All during the twentieth century I’ve run
into people who have either never heard of the War of 1898, or they belittle it.
‘Oh, you mean that one. That wasn’t a real war, just a skirmish. What happened? Did
he stub his toe, running back down San Juan hill?’
(I should have killed them! I did throw an extra dry martini into the eyes of one
man who talked that way.)
Casualties are just as heavy in one war as in another… because death comes just
once to the customer.
And besides… In the summer of 1898 we did not know that the war would be over
quickly. The United States was not a superpower; the United States was not a world
power of any sort… whereas Spain was still a great empire. For all we knew our men
might be gone for years… or not come back. The bloody tragedy of 1861-65 was all
we had to go by, and that had started just like this one, with the President calling
for a few militiamen. My elders tell me that no one dreamed that the rebel states,
half as big and less than half as populous and totally lacking in the heavy industry
on which modern war rests – no sensible person dreamed that they could hold out for
four long, dreary, death-laden years.
With that behind us, we did not assume that beating Spain would be easy or quick; we
just prayed that our men would come back… some day.
The day came, 5 May, when our men left… on a special troop train, down from Kansas
City, a swing over to Springfield, then up to St Louis, and east – destination
Georgia. All of us went over to Butler, Mother and Father in the lead, in his buggy,
drawn by Loafer, while the rest of us followed in the surrey, ordinarily used only
on Sundays, with Tom driving Daisy and Beau. The train pulled in, and we made
hurried goodbyes as they were already shouting ‘All abo . . . ard!’ Father turned
Loafer over to Frank, and I inherited the surrey with the gentle team.
They didn’t actually pull out all that quickly; baggage and freight had to be loaded
as well as soldiers. There was a flat car in the middle of the train, with a brass
band on it, supplied by the 3rd regiment (Kansas City) and it played all the time
the train was stopped, a military medley.
They played ‘Mine eyes have seen the glory…’ and segued right into ‘I wish I was
in de land of cotton’ and from that into ‘Tenting tonight, tenting tonight’ and ‘-
stuck a feather in his cap and called it macaroni!’ Then they played ‘In my prison
cel I sit’ and the engine gave a toot and the train started to move, and the band
scrambled to get off the flat car into the coach next to it, and the man with the