The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1898-08-31
Regulars Not Well Fed.


Point, August % says:
"The condition of some of the regu-
lars in camp is awful and every day it
gets worse. In the matter of baskets
and bundles of delcacies the regulars
have been entirely ignored. They get
nothing but army rations, while the
volunteer regiments are getting more
in the way of good things every day
than they can possibly use. A more
accomplishing lot of men than these
same regulars it would be hard to find.
Many of them are sick, but they make
no complaints. They just line around
their camps and try to get well, BUSH
ness in which they are making little
progress on account of the lack Of
nourishing food.
"It is hard to believe that the Wash
ington authorities are aware of the fact
that the soldiers of the American army
are still getting precisely the same kind
of food that they got in Cuba, and
that in one regiment, the Second Cav
airy, the men are actually on field ra-
tions, which means the provisions that
were furnished 10 them in Cuba. This
stuff must all be eaten up before they
can get any fresh supplies, and as the
meat is bad, the bareback mouldy and
the men still weak and full of fever as
the result of their hard campaign in
Cuba, they are having hard time of it,.
When the regulars want anything out
side of what they get from the Govern
ment, they generally go out and buy it,.
But even this means of getting nourish-
ing food is shut off from them here, as
few if any of them have any money.
They have not been paid in three
months and don't see any prospect OF
getting any money in the immediate
future.
To-day a Second cavalryman, a pale
looking fellow, came up to the Sun re-
porter on the road and sheepishly hold
ing out coupe of Mauser bullets said:
Are those worth few cents to you?
/ took them from Spaniard in Cuba
and they might make interesting SOU
venirs.'
what do you want the money foi?'
asked the reporter
To get something to eat said the
soldier.
Pm starving 10 death here. Pm too
weak to hold the rotten food the Gov
eminent is giving us and | want to get
something decent to eat. There's three
months pay coming to me but l can't
get any of it,
"And this is the story that one hears
all over the camp. Soldiers are selling
all kinds of souvenirs that they collec-
ted in Cuba, in order to get little
nourishing food. The only explana-
ton that can be obtained of this state
of affairs is that regimental COM
mander cannot draw fresh rations for
his men until he has used up what he
got in his last requisitiOn without pay
ing for it himself. And while these
conditions exist in the camps of the
regulars, the camps of the volunteers
are velflowing with good things"
Tomorrow some of the regulars will
get little taste of luxury themselves.
The Sun this morning told of General
Young's appeal to the Ma sachusetts
men who brought over tug-boat load
of supplies for the already bountifully
supplied regiment of volunteers from
that State that is now here. General
Young's appeal for the regulars was
certainly effective, for this afternoon
Lieutenant Governor Halle of Mas
sachusetts and the same party that
came here yesterday arrived with the
same tug filed with good things for the
regulars.
=
The situation in the hospitals here
to-day is serious. There are nearly
1000 patients in the general hospital,
the new hospital which was expected to
relieve things having filled up at once.
The $50 men in the new hospital are
sleeping on the floors. There are nc
cots for them and scarcely enough
blankets to go round.
OF the condition Of things at Camp
Wikoff the Brooklyn Eagle says:
"The omission to have enough cots
for the soldiers of the Seventy first
Regiment and of other regiments at
Camp Wikoff, Montauk Point, and the
necessity of the men, in their enact
ated condition, to have to lie down on
the ground should stir more indigna-
ton than it probably will The people
are so near to despair that they are dis
tant from indignation. They did not
believe, after the mistakes and blum
ders which have been disclosed and de.
nounced, that the indifference or inca
pacity, the imbecility or the cruelty
the short-sighted inhumanity which
caused those blunders would continue
TO cause more of them.
"That was q mistake. The like
plumbers and worse continue. They
are met with up here in the cool and
enlightened North, in the very place
selected to make up to our boys for the
miseries and the wrongs which they
have suffered elsewhere. We wish we
could say that these miseries and
wrongs are at an end or will soon be al
an end. We fear we cannot say it.
When such things as cots, of which
hundred of thousands could be had
even for the asking, without the buy
ing of them at all, are lacking through
the incompetency of the betitled agents
of the richest government of the most
generous people on earth, at a place as
near to New York as Montauk Point
and are lacking for the use of oul
manned and fever-ridden heroes of lib
erty, hope simply sinks below the hori
zon. The hearts of decent people are
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