The “Sky Pilot” and the “Dutch” Corporal.
During the mobilization of the Army at Tampa, Fla., at the outbreak of the Spanish-American War, an orthodox minister enlisted as a private in one of the infantry regiments. On the 6th of June came orders to break camp and prepare to go aboard transports for the invasion of Cuba.
The railroad facilities from Tampa to Port Tampa, where the transports were waiting, were not equal to the emergency. Traffic became more or less clogged, and it was early the next morning when the regiment to which the preacher belonged was entrained. During the early part of the night the men were gathered in groups, some playing “shuffle the brogan,” others busy at “nosey poker,” while the greater part of them were smoking their pipes and telling yarns, or stretching their weary limbs on rolls of canvas, or on the bare ground asleep.
The orthodox minister appeared worried. He was walking to and fro in an aimless manner like a headless chicken. After having paced backward and forward past a pile of mess-chests several times, each time sizing it up, he suddenly began to mount it, planted himself on the very pinnacle, and with a fog-horn voice began a patriotic harangue.
Long, hair-raising, and Spanish-scalping sentences rolled from his lips like crude petroleum from a five-inch pipe. Each inflammatory oratorical flight was dramatically climaxed with the words, “For it is sweet to die for one’s country.”
“For it is sweet to die for one’s country.”
The sleeping ones restlessly turned over, rubbed their eyes, and opened their ears to this wonderful address. The entire regiment, officers included, soon became his audience, and all were inspired with the oft-repeated words, “For it is sweet to die for one’s country.”
This regiment was one of the first to land in Cuba, and took a prominent part in the attack on El Caney. Its position during this fight, for many hours, was within a few hundred paces of the famous “stone block-house,” in a sunken road, and was suffering heavily.
Along about two o’clock in the afternoon matters began to look blue—even a general officer who had fought in many hard battles of the Civil War, and spent the best years of his life combating the Indians on the frontier, was overheard to mutter to his adjutant that he was “afraid we’ve bitten off more’n we can chew.”
There was not a cheerful face to be seen. Men with grinding teeth were soberly looking Death in the face. Sir Orthodox was burrowing his face into Mother Earth in a wild effort to shield himself from Mauser bullets. A German corporal was doing the same thing about fifty feet further down the road.
As the corporal, better known as “Dutch,” was burrowing his face in the mud, an idea struck him, and, like all Teutons, he must make it known. He raised his head and looked up and down the line of prostrate soldiers till his eye fell on the flattened figure of the minister. In a voice that could be heard the full length of the regiment, he bleated out: “Say, dere, Sky Pilots, id aind so schveet to died for vonce countries, aind id?”
The effect was magical. Amid this scene of carnage and death a wild yell of merriment went up that brought courage to many weakening hearts, and Caney had fallen before the men had ceased to laugh at the joke on the preacher.