“What is to happen Thursday night?” I inquired.
“Wait,” he said; “wait until then. It will be wonderful.” And his brother officers shared his mild excitement over the events promised for this particular night. I had visions of all sorts of exciting things—of night attacks, forced marches, or anything up to a real declaration of war.
“But what is it?” I asked, growing intensely interested.
“Why,” he said, “the army is going to bivouac all night—in the open air—on the ground;” and then he settled back to watch the effect of his startling statement.
So unused to camping were they that the event was looked forward to as children might look forward to Christmas morning. It was the event of the campaign, and the effect of putting these soldiers into the field where there were no houses to be used for shelter would be a problem.
The custom of the foreign governments of giving medals to their soldiers for a campaign is an exceedingly good one, and might well be copied to a degree in the United States. There is a certain aversion in this country for the use of national medals, and yet there are quite as many in the form of military orders, society orders, and decorations issued by the various States, as are used in any European country. But these all lack that distinguished origin and endorsement which makes a man proud to wear them. The British government is far in advance in the system it has adopted for military decorations. A war medal is struck after every campaign, and given to every man who has shared in it, the soldiers receiving a silver medal, and the camp-followers, drivers, etc., a bronze one. They are worn with full dress, and the ribbons are worn with fatigue dress or in the field. The higher orders are the Victoria Cross, which corresponds to our Medal of Honor, and the “distinguished service” order, given for the same kind of deeds for which the men of our army would be mentioned in the order of that name, issued each year by the Secretary of War.
It would be a very simple thing for our government to issue a war medal after every campaign, to be given to every man who had served in it. It is a trinket of no intrinsic value, but the men who have the right to wear it have gained it through hard-fought battles and privations without number; they prize these trophies superlatively, and their families treasure them after they are dead. Our government now issues several medals, and so the campaign medal would be no departure from our custom. It is always a pleasure to see the respect paid to some old pensioner who carries an empty sleeve, as he enters a room or climbs into a ’bus in London, with the medal of the Crimea hanging to his coat.
The fighting man in the field commands respect, no matter from what nation he may come, nor for what cause he is fighting. He is one atom of a great body that acts under the head and brain of one man, and to a certain extent he reflects the personality of his commander. But he is directly dependent upon the officers over him, and it rests largely with them whether he is to be considered a capable man or not. The British soldier has been taught to rely absolutely upon the judgment of his officers; and if he has been found wanting, the blame rests with them and not with him. No better war material could be desired than the khaki man fighting in South Africa, unless it be the man in the blue shirt fighting in the Philippines.
This latter man represents the extreme of self-reliance in the field; to that he has been trained by his officers; for that his original intelligence and his Yankee inventiveness have peculiarly fitted him. With that self-reliance goes an American objection to being dispirited under failure. When he is down he does not stop regarding himself as “game”; under awful odds he cannot see sense in surrender, and if he does become a prisoner he schemes and frets and digs and plots to escape. He is probably the best fighting soldier in the world.