CHAPTER TWELVE
What They Are There For A Sketch of General Guy V. Henry, a Typical American Soldier
I. Savage Warfare
The most thankless task that can be undertaken by a nation is warfare against savage or semi-civilized peoples. In it there is usually little glory; nor is there any reward, save the consciousness of disagreeable duty well performed. The risk to the soldier is greater than in ordinary war, since the savages usually torture the wounded and the captured. Success can only be achieved by an arduous, persistent, wearing down process, which affords little opportunity for scientific fighting, yet which demands military talents of the highest order.
Almost anybody can understand the strategy or the tactics of a pitched battle where the number engaged is large, the casualties heavy, and the results decisive; but very few non-professional critics appreciate a campaign of relentless pursuit by a small army of a smaller body of mobile hostiles, here and there capturing a little band, now and then killing or disabling a few, until in the final round-up the enemy, reduced to perhaps less than a score, surrenders. There is nothing spectacular about the performance, and everybody wonders why it took so long.
And as injustice and wrong have not been infrequent in the preliminary dealings between the government and the savages, the soldier, who has only to obey his orders, comes in for much unmerited censure from those who think darkly though they speak bitterly. Especially is he criticized if, when maddened by the suffering, the torture, of some comrade, the soldier sinks to the savage level in his treatment of his ruthless foeman. No one justifies such a lapse, of course, but few there be who even try to understand it. The incessant campaigning in the Philippines, with its resulting scandals, is an instance in point.
Long before the Spanish-American War and its Philippine corollary, however, our little army had shown itself capable of the hardest and most desperate campaigning against the Indians of the West—as difficult and dangerous a work as any army ever undertook. There was so much of it, and it abounded with so many thrilling incidents, that volumes could be written upon it without exhausting its tragedy, its romance. There were few soldiers who served beyond the Mississippi from 1865 to 1890 who did not participate in a score of engagements, whose lives were not in peril more than once in many a hard, but now forgotten, campaign.
From the collection of J. Robert Coster
| COL. RANALD S. MACKENZIE | GEN. GUY V. HENRY |
| CAPT. ANSON MILLS | W. F. CODY (BUFFALO BILL) |
GROUP OF DISTINGUISHED INDIAN FIGHTERS