On the first day or two of this system of company mess, affairs did not seem to run as smoothly as was anticipated. The cooks were forced to chop their own wood and wash the dishes; and though there was food thrown away after each meal, many of the men were growling about not getting enough to eat. This was finally remedied by having the first sergeant detail squads each day to do the necessary kitchen work. This system proved an entire success and a great improvement, the meals being prepared more quickly, served better, and less food wasted. As a sample of the detail made each morning, we insert that for Wednesday, July the 18th, the last day of our stay in this camp at Ninth and D streets.
DETAIL FOR CAMP WORK JULY 18, 1894.
Keane, Wise, McKaig, dishwashers; T. McCulloch, O’Brien, woodchoppers; Monahan, Overstreet, O’Malley, cook helpers; Perry, Powlesen, R. Radke, G. Radke, Stealey, Sieberst, waiters.
Later on, when enough plates, cups, knives, and forks had been issued by the commissary department to furnish each man with a separate kit, the necessity for appointing dishwashers was done away with, as each man was supposed to use and keep clean his own kit.
CO. B STREET WHILE CAMPED AT NINTH AND D STREETS, SACRAMENTO, CAL.
During the day several trips were made from the camp down the line to the American river bridge. One in the forenoon by Major Burdick, escorted by some of B’s best marksmen, another under Corporal Jack Wilson, who was looking for adventure, but found only hard work; and still another in the afternoon by Kelly, Unger, and Monahan, who were out on a foraging expedition. These latter went armed with revolvers, pumping with one hand and holding their instruments of destruction in the other. On returning from their successful expedition they noticed an empty car just outside the lines of the lower track guard crowded with a dozen or more disreputable looking characters, tramps in all probability. On arriving at the guard-house of the track guard they informed the officer in charge, who sent a detail down on their car to make the arrest. We have received information from a reliable source that a most determined resistance, a fight to the death, would have been made had not the opposing forces caught sight of Van Sieberst, thirsting for gore, whose face with its hirsute adornment of curly black whiskers, one “Wandering Willie” was heard to remark, would get up steam in a dead engine. So the arrest was made and the prisoners, a dozen or more, were marched up the line to general headquarters.
At 6 P. M. the guards for the succeeding twenty-four hours were formed and sent out, Company G, as a whole, relieving the American river bridge guard, and guards, formed of details from the different companies, relieving the lower and upper track guards; that relieving the lower having no men from B, though commanded by Lieutenant Filmer, and that relieving the upper, under charge of Lieutenant Lundquist, having with them Sergeant Kelly, Corporal Burdick, and privates Bannan, Williams, Gilkyson, Frech, Flanagan, Crowley, Zimmerman, and Baumgartner, detailed from B.
The work required of this, as of the lower track guard, was most decidedly none of the easiest. Many narrow, dark streets and alleys ran into the tracks along which the sentries of this guard were posted, the tracks running within a few feet of the corners of these streets, necessitating extreme watchfulness on the part of the men. An unwary sentinel could be knocked senseless at any of these dark corners without the least difficulty or chance of exposing the assailant to the view of the other sentries.
We in camp passed the evening quietly. This splitting up of the company seemed to act as a damper on the spirits of the men. Little of such hilarity as was indulged in on the Capitol grounds being even thought of here. Doubtless one of the main reasons for this could be found in the fact that it was more the rule than the exception that out of a tent crowd of six or seven there would be but three or two, or sometimes only one, left in camp to occupy the tent.