This was a gala day for all on board; burnished bayonets glittered in the noonday’s sun, while the khaki uniforms of the soldiers of the sea contrasted with the immaculate white of the sailors.
The officers of the battalion to a man were soldiers, like those of the St. Louis battalion, thorough in the art of war; men who had proved themselves in active service; unlike a few under whom I served, who broke into the army in ’98 and earlier, whose non-commissioned officers were required to draw their topographical outlines, and who, were
it necessary to depend on their merits in civil life, would suffer incompetency in a country grocery.
The voyage down the coast was one grand round of pleasure; apparently it was “an excursion” for the men who had fought their way through Tien Tsin on to Pekin, and with Riley’s battery, the Ninth and the Fourteenth Infantry, had battered, rammed, fired, and scaled the walls of the Forbidden City. On the gun-deck of the man-of-war talented musicians of the battalion kept an incessant flow of music in action, a piano accompanying the popular songs of the sea and field, as rendered in their true originality by some whose bones were doomed to bleach on the gruesome battle-fields of Samar.
Lieutenant “Jack” Gridley, ever popular with the officers and men, in whose company the writer had served, cheerfully announced the proceedings of the programme. It was far from our thoughts that night that this brave son of the captain of the historic Olympia, after braving the dangers of war, must suffer the wiles of the grim reaper in peace, in the terrible explosion aboard the battleship Missouri.
About midnight of the second day, while cruising along the coast of Samar, under the cover of darkness, signal-lights could be seen dimly burning at points of vantage. With the aid of night binoculars a camp of insurgents was discovered bivouacked along the side of the mountains, several miles up the coast from Catabalogan. A powerful search-light thrown on this scene made the enemy clearly visible, and great activity could be seen among the insurgents, as if startled by impending danger. With great accuracy of aim an eight-inch shell was dropped in the camp; this was followed by a bombardment of the coast, in which the broadside batteries flashed their deadly munitions of war, creating terrible havoc and demoralizing the enemy. Dropping anchor in the harbor of Catabalogan, the cruiser was met by the Zafiro, which conveyed the battalion to Balangiga, the scene of the slaughter of the Ninth.
The following day the sad news of the death of Midshipman Noya reached the New York, being the first naval officer killed in the Samar campaign. Cadet Noya was
of the class of 1900, Annapolis Academy; his death was attributed largely to the fact of his having worn a white uniform on shore. At about five o’clock in the evening of October 27, 1901, accompanied by half a dozen sailors, he went ashore at Nippa-Nippa near the bay to look for suspected smugglers. Sending four of the men into the town, he remained on the beach while the two men in the boat retired about two hundred yards from shore. His white uniform evidently attracted attention, and unseen by him a dozen bolo-men crept upon the officer; there was a noiseless rush, he was felled with a bolo wound and his pistol taken, with which they shot him. The men in the boat, hearing his cry, leaped overboard and half waded, half swam to his rescue; they reached him while he was still conscious. “Men, be very careful; they have taken my revolver,” he murmured, and died. The remains were placed in the boat (the others having returned) and taken to Catabalogan. A sailor had wig-wagged across the bay, and as the body arrived at the dock it was met by a cortege consisting of
General Smith, Admiral Rodgers, Chaplain Chidwick, and others.
Some time was spent in making primary arrangements for the final resting-place, which consisted, in that hostile country at that time, of turning over the sod and organizing a firing squad. A heavy rain fell as the procession was formed at the dock in the following order: Military band, detachment of soldiers, naval band, detachment of sailors, body, pall-bearers, and mourners, consisting of members of the army and navy. To the slow music of a dirge, the procession moved out of town to the little National cemetery on the hill-side. Here the mourners drew up about the grave while the solemn burial service was read by Chaplain Chidwick, who took this occasion to make a few remarks on the character of the deceased. As the chaplain concluded his remarks, the firing squad of soldiers drew up, and three sharp clear volleys rang out over the open grave, followed by the ever-beautiful sound of “taps,” concluding the service. As the first clods fell in the grave, the military band struck up a lively two-step and led the procession