The West from a car window

by Richard Harding Davis

The life of an army post, its internal arrangements, its necessary routine, and its expedients for breaking this routine pleasantly, cannot be dealt with so briefly; it is a delicate and extensive subject. It is impossible to separate the official and social life of an army post. The commanding officer does not lose that dignity which doth hedge him in when he and his orderly move from the administration building to his quarters, and it would obviously confuse matters if a second lieutenant bet him in the morning he could not put the red bail into the right-corner pocket, and in the evening at dress parade he should order the same lieutenant and his company into the lower right-hand corner of the parade at double-quick. This would tend to destroy discipline. And so, as far as the men of the post are concerned, the official and social life touch at many points. With the women, of course, it is different, although there was a colonel’s wife not long ago who said to the officers’ wives assisting her to receive at a dance, “You will take your places, ladies, in order of rank.” I repeat this mild piece of gossip because it was the only piece of gossip I heard at any army post, which is interesting when one remembers the reputation given the army posts by one of their own people for that sort of thing.

The official head of the post is the commanding officer, he has under him eight “companies,” if they are infantry, or “troops” if they are cavalry, each commanded in turn by a captain, who has under him a first and second lieutenant, who rule in their turn numerous sergeants and corporals. There is also a major or two, two or three surgeons, who rank with the captains, and a quartermaster and an adjutant, who are selected from among the captains or lieutenants of the post, and who perform, in consequence, double duty. The majority of the officers are married; this is not a departmental regulation nor a general order, but it happens to be so. I visited one very large post in which every one was married except one girl, and a second lieutenant, who spoiled the natural sequel by being engaged to a girl somewhere else. And at the post I had visited before this there were ten unmarried and unengaged lieutenants, and no young women. It seems to me that this presents an unbalanced condition of affairs, which should be considered and adjusted by Congress even before the question of lineal promotion.

THE OMNIPOTENT BUGLER

It is true that the commanding officer is supposed to be the most important personage in an army post, but that is not so. He, as well as every one else in it, is ruled by a young person with a brass trumpet, who apparently never sleeps, eats, or rests, and who spends his days tooting on his bugle in the middle of the parade in rainy and in sunny weather and through good and evil report. He sounds in all thirty-seven “calls” a day, and the garrison gets up and lies down, and eats, and waters the horses, and goes to church and school, and to horse exercise, and mounts guard, and drills recruits, and parades in full dress whenever he thinks they should. His prettiest call is reveille, which is sounded at half-past six in the morning. It is bright and spirited, and breathes promise and hope for the new day, and I personally liked it best because it meant that while I still had an hour to sleep, three hundred other men had to get up and clean cold guns and things in the semi-darkness. Next to the bugler in importance is the quartermaster. He is a captain or a first lieutenant with rare executive ability, and it is he who supplies the garrison with those things which make life bearable or luxurious, and it is he who is responsible to the Government for every coat of whitewash on the stables, and for the new stove-lid furnished the cook of N Troop, Thirteenth Cavalry. He is the hardest-worked man in the post, although that would possibly be denied by every other officer in it; and he is supposed to be an authority on architecture, sanitary plumbing, veterinary surgery, household furnishing from the kitchen range to the electric button on the front door, and to know all things concerning martial equipments from a sling-belt to an ambulance.

He is a wonderful man, and possessed of a vast and intricate knowledge, but his position in the post is very much like that of a base-ball umpire’s on the field, for he is never thanked if he does well, and is abused by every one on principle. And he is never free. At the very minute he is lifting the green mint to his lips, his host will say, “By-the-way, my striker tells me that last piece of stove-pipe you furnished us does not fit by two inches; I don’t believe you looked at the dimensions;” and when he hastens to join the ladies for protection, he is saluted with an anxious chorus of inquiries as to when he is going to put that pane of glass in the second-story window, and where are those bricks for the new chimney. His worst enemies, however, lie far afield, for he wages constant war with those clerks at the Treasury Department at Washington who go over his accounts and papers, and who take keen and justifiable pride in making him answer for every fraction of a cent which he has left unexplained. The Government, for instance, furnishes his storehouse with a thousand boxes of baking-powder, valued at seventy dollars, or seven cents a box. If he sells three boxes for twenty-five cents—I am quoting an actual instance—the Treasury Department returns his papers, requesting him to explain who got the four cents, and is anxious to know what he means by it.

I once saw some tin roofs at a post; they had been broken in coming, and the quartermaster condemned them. That was a year ago, and his papers complaining about these tin roofs have been travelling back and forth between contractor and express agent and the department at Washington and the quartermaster ever since, and they now make up a bundle of seventy different papers. Sometimes the quartermaster defeats the Treasury Department; sometimes it requires him to pay money out of his own pocket. Three revolvers were stolen out of their rack once, and the post quartermaster was held responsible for their loss. He objected to paying the sum the Government required, and pointed out that the revolvers should have been properly locked in the rack. The Government replied that the lock furnished by it was perfect, and not to be tampered with or scoffed at, and that his excuse was puerile. This quartermaster had a mechanic in his company, and he sent for the young man, and told him to go through the barracks and open all the locks he could. At the end of an hour every rack and soldier’s box in the post were burglarized, and the Government paid for the revolvers.

UNITED STATES MILITARY POST AT SAN ANTONIO

The post quartermaster’s only pleasure lies in his storehouse, and in the neatness and order in which he keeps his supplies. He dearly loves to lead the civilian visitor through these long rows of shelves, and say, while clutching at his elbow to prevent his escape, “You see, there are all the shovels in that corner; then over there I have the Sibley tents, and there on that shelf are the blouses, and next to them are the overcoats, and there are the canvas shoes, and on that shelf we keep matches, and down here, you see, are the boots. Everything is in its proper place.” At which you are to look interested, and say, “Ah, yes!” just as though you had expected to see the baking-powder mixed with the pith helmets, and the axe-handles and smoking-tobacco grouped together on the floor.