There are even times when comrades are lying about dead and dying, and the missives of death yet speeding by, searching for new victims, or to penetrate the quivering form of the already wounded, that something occurs to bring forth peals of laughter.
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.