WE HAVE TO FACE ANOTHER ENEMY MORE DEADLY THAN THE SPANIARDS.
AND now that the Spaniards had been conquered and Santiago was ours we found ourselves facing another enemy even more deadly than the Mauser bullets or the machete. Up to the surrender the health of our regiment, everything considered, had been fairly good. Sickness there was to be sure, but nothing more than was to be expected in a regiment of 900 men subjected to the exposures and hardships incidental to a campaign in a foreign land, and these exposures supplemented by a ration, which even when plentiful, which was not often, was entirely unfitted for soldiers campaigning in a warm climate. Again it must be remembered that our work in Cuba was performed in the rainy season and that sleeping in mud, marching and bivouacking in the rain and fording deep streams are not conducive to rugged health when persisted in day after day. But so long as the active campaign lasted, the excitement and novelty of it all kept the men up. After the surrender, when there was little or nothing for them to do, they were in condition to fall an easy prey to the "calentura" or malarial fever, and to the diseases of the stomach incident to camp life with a poorly adapted ration. Fat bacon and canned beans, containing fully as much grease as beans, are not the kind of food the sensible man going to spend a time in the tropics would select for his menu, but that is what we got and it was eat it or nothing.
During the active campaign many men of the regiment were ill from one cause or another, but as a matter of fact, there was nothing like a general outbreak of sickness at any time until some days after the surrender. A number of the men contracted rheumatism from sleeping on the damp ground and there were scattered cases of measles and stomach disorders. But the average daily sick report never went much beyond a dozen cases, which it must be admitted is not bad for an organization of nearly 1000 men living under the conditions which we did.
For the first few days after Santiago surrendered all went well. There were propositions to move the troops further inland and up into the mountains with a view of escaping any possibility of the dreaded yellow fever which was showing itself at Siboney, the houses of which village had been burned to the ground in order to remove the danger of infection, but the contemplated move was not made and we remained in our last station until the regiment sailed for Montauk Point.
On the day after the surrender Col. Clark issued orders for daily company drills and inspections with a view of giving the men something to do, he recognizing, as an old soldier, that idleness is the worst possible thing in camp. He and his superiors realized, however, that the army had passed through a most trying, though short campaign, and that the men deserved a rest, but at the same time there were already warnings that the less active the men were, the easier they fell prey to the climatic diseases of the country. Even after we had been in our last camp for a few days, there were signs that the fever was at work and with our limited supply of medicines, it was feared that it might become epidemic. That these fears were only too well grounded was soon to be made manifest.
Corp'l Thos. C. Boon. K. Co.
Pvt. J. L. Morehouse. K. Co.
Private Michael R. Lyons. K. Co.
Musician Frank P. Jones. K. Co.
Corp'l W. C. Piper. K. Co.
Pvt. Arthur Burnham. K. Co.
The day following the surrender, Col. Clark and Major Bowen, the regimental surgeon, established a hospital in an old and dilapidated wooden building a couple of hundred yards in front of our advanced line of trenches and which had been used as a railway station. It was in poor shape, the roof being partly gone and the flooring bad, but it was better than leaving the sick men in their stuffy little shelter tents or out in the open air. The division hospitals were already overcrowded with wounded and sick men and the regimental commanders were notified that they would have to care for their own sick as best they could. Even as bad as the building selected for our hospital was, it was looked upon with envy by the commanding officers of other regiments and it was even suggested to Col. Clark that he divide it up with the other regiments of our brigade.