The evening times., 1898-09-09
CAMP GHOSTS.
Volunteer Cadavers Roaming the
Tents of Montnuk Point.

One of the pathetic incidents of the
camp at Montauk was not due particu-
larly to the lack of food and care, but it
was almost as pathetic a case of star
walton. In fact, 1t was starvation-of the
mind and heart. Such things are likely 10
happen wherever men are gathered in
great companies away from home, under
hard conditions, but they happen ofte>ar
at Montauk from the fact that the at
tention of the visitors is claimed almost
entirely by their own special friends, who
are in need of all sorts of things, so that
there is none to spare for the men with
out friends. "A correspondent writes:
Visitors are beginning to come to
camp. Since the beginning there have
been some each day who have braved or,
more likely, failed to understand the
hardships of the life here. Nearly all of
these have been hospital visitors who
have come to see sick friends, spent a
few Intellectual hours in beseeching
powerless officials for aid, and gone away
with the beginnings of a notion what war
really means. But yesterday there was
quite an influx OF the other kind of Wis
itors, CHEEKY and cheering, who came 10
day in the open air. The sound of high
pitched voices was heard along the road
ways and there was the bright hutter
| of dresses on windy hills. 1t goes with
out saying that all the arrivals had
| brought refreshments for the inner man,
and now and again on hillsides to right
| and left of the road one could see i'm
prOvised picnic parties, at which the place
of distinguished honor was accorded TO
,I,, hot 10 Wa
| curious to see how variously the unvisit-
ed soldiers were affected by the sight of
| their luckier comrades lunch parties
| Some it frightened up, others 1t affected
| in the opposite way. simply accentuating
their homesiekness. a miserably pale and
sick infantryman limping to the top of
! mound found himself looking down on
one of these parties There were four In
it. three women making much of a cav
alryman.
The invalid looked and looked. and the
longer he looked the longer grew his
face Finally he threw himself down,
buried his face in his arms and lay there,
his shoulders shaking. One of the wo-
men in the party happened to catch
sight of him in this attitude, stared at
him for a while, jumped to her feet,
caught up a bottle of gingerale in one
hand and a sandwich in the other and
ran up the hill. The cavalryman fol-
lowed, and between them they helped
the sick soldier down to the feast spread
on the grass below. He was too ill to
eat much, but he leaned back on his
elbow at one corner of the spread and
his pinched face began to lose its lines
of suffering. He was getting better
remedy than any of the doctors could
give him.
The most pftiable sight that is to be
seen hereabouts outside of the hospitals,
is the ghost type. The camp ghost is
the man who isn't Ill enough to be ad-
mitted to the hospital but is too weak to
| do duty. Therefore he has nothing 10 do
| but wander, and he really lacks the
| strength for this, but he always essays it.
with the result that he drops by the way
side and lies until a jolting army wagon
| OF hospital conveyance picks him up. Or.
| feeling his energy waning, he essays a
| short cut over the succession of ground
sweIls that make up the landscape here.
| There was one of the Twenty-second reg
ulars whose knees gave out when he was
| in the hollow between two hillockS yes
| terday morning. On his hands and knees
| he crawled through a marsh to the sum-
| NIT of the neghboring hillock and there
tainted Swirling banks of fog were chas-
| ing each other over the land, limiting the
! range of vision TO a few yards all the
| morning. and it was not until noon that
| two volunteers who were wandering found
| him and carried him to the roadway. This
| is one instance of many that might be
| cited.
such cases. says one of the surgeons
| here, are just about beyond treatment !
haven't yet been able to comprehend the
| condition of mind and body which pro-
| duces the camp ghost. The cause is the
| hardships of the Cuban campaign, re-
| peated attacks of fever and lack of nour-
ishing food at the time when it was most
needed. Yet these ghosts are not Ill in
the ordinary meaning of the term
| There is no specific ailment. They are
| simply devitaliZed. 1t is useless to take
! them into the hospitals. Their best chance
is in plenty Of fresh air and cheering
-companionship, though, God knows
| there's little enough of that last here. II
we could surround those fellows with the
people they love and that love them I'd
guarantee 80 per cent of cures It would
| revive their interest in life. As 1t is.
| their sad faces are a contagion. They
droop a little more each day, until one
| day they droop into the hospital. The
next day they are more than likely TO be
dead. On the records we put 1t down as
| exhaustion and I guess that Is pretty
near it; exhaustion of all the vializine
| instincts that bind a man to this earth ~
| Doesn't Rcciprocate.
CFrom the Kansas City Star.)