PRIVATE DENNIS HOGAN, HERO
It was while I was sitting around a barrack-room fire that I picked up the following story. There were a number of old soldiers in my company—men who had served twenty-five years in the army—and their fund of anecdote and excitement was of the largest size.
On Thanksgiving Day, 187—, Private Dennis Hogan, Company B, 29th United States Infantry, the telegraph operator at Fort Flint, Montana, sat in his dingy little "two by four" office in the headquarter building, communing with himself and cussing any force of circumstances that made him a soldier. The instruments were quiet, a good Thanksgiving dinner had been enjoyed and now the smoke from his old "T. D." pipe curled in graceful rings around his red head.
Denny was a smashing good operator and some eighteen months before he had landed in St. Louis dead broke. All the offices and railroads were full and nary a place did he get. While walking up Pine street one morning his eye fell foul of a sign:—
"Wanted, able-bodied, unmarried men, between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-five, for service in the United States Army."
In his mind's eye he sized himself up and came to the conclusion that he would fill all the requirements. Now, he hadn't any great hankering for soldiering, but he didn't have a copper to his name and as empty stomachs stand not on ceremony, in he went and after being catechized by the recruiting sergeant, he was pounded for thirty minutes by the examining surgeon, pronounced as sound as a dollar, and then sworn in "to serve Uncle Sam honestly and faithfully for five years. So help me God." The space of time necessary to transform a man from a civilian to a soldier is of a very short duration, and almost before he knew it he was dressed in the plain blue of the soldier of the Republic. He was assigned to B company of the 28th United States Infantry stationed at Fort Flint, Montana. The experience was new and novel to him, and the three months recruit training well nigh wore him out, but he stuck to it, and some two months after he had been returned to duty, he was detailed as telegraph operator vice Adams of G Company, discharged. There he had remained since.
At four o'clock on the afternoon in question Denny was aroused from his reverie by the sounder opening up and calling "FN" like blue blazes. He answered and this is what he took:
"Department Headquarters St. Paul, Minn.
"November 26th, 187—
"Commanding Officer,
"Fort Flint, Montana.
"Sioux Indians out. Prepare your command
for instant field service. Thirty days' rations;
two hundred rounds ammunition per man. Wire
when ready.
"By command of Major General Wherry.
(Signed) Smith,
"Assistant Adjutant-General."
Denny was the messenger boy as well as operator and without waiting to make an impression copy, he grabbed his hat and flew down the line to the colonel's quarters. That worthy was entertaining a party at dinner, and was about to give Hogan fits for bringing the message to him instead of to the post adjutant; but a glance at the contents changed things and in a moment all was bustle and confusion.
For weeks the premonitory signs of this outbreak had been plainly visible, but true to the red-tape conditions, the army could not move until some overt act had been committed. The generous interior department had supplied the Indians with arms and ammunition and then Mr. Red Devil under that prince of fiends incarnate, Sitting Bull, started on his campaign of plunder and pillage.