The non-commissioned staff, as finally mustered in, was made up of Sergt.-Maj. William D. Huddleson, Q.M.-Sergt. Edward E. Chapman, Hospital Stewards George Y. Sawyer, Ira B. Phillips, Thomas White, Principal Musicians James F. Clark and Frederick A. H. Bennett. Of the old non-commissioned staff, Paymaster-Sergt. George R. Russell and Color-Sergt. Axel T. Tornrose, whose militia grades were not recognized in the volunteer service, refused to be left behind, and proved their devotion to the regiment by enlisting as privates. The regimental band, as well as the corps of field musicians attached to headquarters under the militia organization, could not be mustered, and until the close of its term of service the regiment was obliged to rest satisfied with the music of its battery buglers, save for the short period at Framingham prior to going on furlough, when the thoughtfulness of the State authorities allowed the band to rejoin.
Photograph by T. E. Marr, Boston.
FIELD, STAFF, AND LINE OFFICERS.
Under the terms on which the mustering of the regiment had been ordered by the War Department, it entered the service with forty-eight commissioned officers and seven hundred and three enlisted men, an aggregate for duty of seven hundred and fifty-one. In its personnel the command was exceptionally fortunate. Of its officers, twenty-five per cent. were college bred, while in its ranks were to be found representatives of nearly every college and technical school in New England. In machinists, electricians, and skilled mechanics—the sort of material without which an artillery command never can attain its full efficiency—the regiment was encouragingly strong. A newspaper sketch of the Sixth Massachusetts Infantry, recently published, gives a roll of twenty-one Harvard men who served in that command, and accompanies it with this comment: "Harvard University contributed her quota to the army last summer, and the Sixth had as many of her sons in the ranks as any regiment in the service." It is perhaps worth noting, though it hardly need be a matter for controversy, that no less than thirty-four graduates and undergraduates of the Cambridge University went out with the First, of whom nine were commissioned officers, while the remainder served faithfully and with credit as enlisted men. It is a matter for regret that statistics relating to men from other colleges who served in the regiment are not available, but it may be of interest to record here the Harvard roll, which may be considered approximately complete:
Commissioned officers: James A. Frye (1886), major; John Bordman, Jr. (1894), captain; John B. Paine (1891), first lieutenant and range officer; E. Dwight Fullerton (1898), first lieutenant; William A. Rolfe (M.S., 1890), first lieutenant and assistant surgeon; William S. Bryant (1884), first lieutenant and assistant surgeon, later promoted major and brigade surgeon, and assigned to Seventh Corps; Albert A. Gleason (1886), second lieutenant; Sumner Paine (1890), second lieutenant; Joseph S. Francis (1897), second lieutenant.
Enlisted men: Louis H. Brittin (L.S.S., 1901), corporal, "A"; Arthur H. Howard (1898), corporal, "A"; Edward D. Powers (1898), corporal, "A"; Ralph W. Black (1886), private, "K"; Edward A. Bumpus (1898), private, "A," later appointed second lieutenant, Twenty-first United States Infantry; John Corbett (temporary student), private, "B"; Charles W. Cutler (1898), private, "A"; Eugene H. Douglass (1898), private, "A"; Howard B. Grose (1901), private, "K"; Frederick Heilig (1897), private, "A"; Edwin B. Holt (1896), private, "A"; Benjamin Kaufman (1900), private, "D"; Charles H. Keene (1898), private, "A"; James L. Knox (1898), private, "A"; John F. McGrath (1895), private, "A"; Moses I. Reuben (1889), private, "K"; George R. Russell (temporary student), private, "K"; Francis R. Stoddard, Jr. (1899), private, "A"; Harry C. Strong (1899), private, "K"; Edward A. Thurston (temporary student, L.S.), private, "M"; Calvin S. Tilden (1898), private, "A"; John A. White (1896), private, "B"; Charles H. Williams (L.S.S., 1900), private, "A"; Francis C. Wilson (1898), private, "A"; Roger Wolcott, Jr. (1898), private, "A."
THE SEASON OF RUMORS
IX.
These were stirring times for the regiment. It was the period of rumors—of rumors that at any time might develop into realities. In order to obtain an adequate idea of the atmosphere in which the command then lived, it would be necessary to turn to the files of the newspapers for the early spring of 1898, and make a classified list of the Spanish naval bugaboos daily appearing in their columns. One odd coincidence is well worth recalling, as showing that all the misapprehensions were not confined to our own cities. On the evening of April 26th, the day on which the regiment reported at Fort Warren, mass meetings were held at Portsmouth and New Bedford, to protest against the utter disregard shown by the Government for the defenses at those points—and on that very night there was given in Havana a public banquet to celebrate the bombardment of Boston, of which rumors had spread in that city! Spook fleets were common in those days, and the men of the First, happily forgetful of the fact that they were manning obsolete works, armed for the most part with obsolete ordnance, and, worst of all, wofully short of ammunition, daily hoped that the spook cruisers might materialize into ships of steel. What little time was left from their duties they employed in pitying their less fortunate comrades in inland camps, whom they considered hopelessly out of the game of coastwise attack and defence which was expected to begin at any time.
And all this speculation, as a matter of fact, was not so wild as it now may seem. It was known that the Spanish torpedo flotilla had rendezvoused at the Cape Verde Islands on March 24th, where it was joined on April 14th by the Infanta Maria Teresa and Cristobal Colon, and later, on the 20th, by the Vizcaya and Almirante Oquendo. On the 22d of April this formidable squadron was ordered to sea, and on the 29th it sailed—to a destination then unknown to any one on this side of the Atlantic. During the four anxious weeks that followed, this threatening fleet was lost to sight; and throughout this month of uncertainty, as Spears, the historian of the Navy in its latest war, rightly says, "Not only was it a mysterious squadron in its movements: to a large part of our along-shore population it was positively fearsome. And there was good reason, when the makeup of the squadron only is considered, for vigilance, if not for alarm, in our more weakly fortified harbors. Where it would make a landfall was a question, for the whole United States coast was, in a way, open to attack."