The Mena star., 1898-08-17
THOSE REGULARS OF OURS.
THEIR SPLENDID MANLlNESS
 AMID HARDSHIPS.
Brave, Quiet, Patient Men They Are, Who Die Quietly Upon Occasion / Heroism of Frank Martinez,
 Sandman.

army life that you lose the most pre- clous and essential thing writer can have-and that is his point of view. Nothing seems strange or unusual to you any more. You get used to hunt ing for your food and sleeping in the high grass and loosing your tooth brush and making paper caps for the wounded men and carrying gruel to the sick and trading pinch of tobacco for half a hardtaclx and drinking from the same canteen that your negro servant drinks from. These things cease to be hardships and you cannot imagine that any body would be inter- ested in their recital. Colonels and foreign attaches and authors who have always delighted the English speak ing race with their work come to you for food or cook over your fire and drink sparingly from your canteen, and when your food gives out and when your fire is gone you get return of favors. All this makes for perfect democracy of feeling. The buffer and the liar and the boaster doesn't retain the level he won amid the arti- facilities of civilization. And the good man, the generous, kind hearted, helpful man shines out in the most splendid colors. He gets to be regard ed as the direct am mbassador of heaven because all men, during an active campaign in a strange country. are so dependent one upon the other.
 The spirit of helpfulness and kind ness prevails all through the ranks of the regular army. can remember the time when 1 used to hear that our regulars were recruited largely from idle, worthless and often dangerous men, ex-convicts, tramps and the like | of that The people who said this may have been justified in what they said, but if they were, then to have lived idly, hlessly, and to have been imprisoned, IS grand schooling in kindness of heart unflinching brav- cry, generosity of spirit and simple, straight t-forward manliness.
 What used to delight me particular iy about these regulars was their un- affectedness. They never posed before you, whatever your station, and by the same token they never imposed upon you. They were respectful al- ways, and they were always quiet deft and willing. They seemed to have no nerves in the sense of ever being nervous, and no muscles, in the | sense of ever being tired. They lived quietly and if the occasion demanded ] it they died quietly. That was curi- ous fact. I never saw dying regular | delirious. When it came to dying they maintained the same tactiturn, re- spectful attitude they assumed while living.
 An, they are brave, silent patent men and am glad 1 am home again, if only to tell of them and to write 1 about them. To one of them I am sure I owe it that l am home, that I | am alive and able to acknowledge my debt to him. I shall not forget that little swarthy, smiling Italian who, de- spite his nativity, is good an as Ameri- | can as.ever lifted his hat to the flag. Frank Martinez IS his name, and when | he isn't busy saving peoples lives he plays the symbals in the band of the | Thirteenth infantry, U. S A.
 When the yellow fever broke out at Siboney an isolation camp was estab- llshed some two or three miles back in 1 the woods. Thither we who had the fe- yer were taken and thither went Frank Martinez. There were between fifty i and seventyfve of us, and he was our only nurse. Without him 1 do not know what we would have done, and yet he was such little chap, and had never had the fever, and was playing with his fife in coming nearus He was always awake, always near at hand always responsive to the faintest whimper of a sick man. There was no cot for him to sleep on and no room for it in the tents if there had been one So he passed the nights on a box of hospital stores under tree, say he passed the nights because I don't see now he could have slept through them. He was never caught sleeping by any of that sleepless. rest