The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1901-02-15
THE DEAD, THE WOUNDED AND THE
SICK ON THEIR HOMEWARD JOURNEY

hunks. as their wounds refuse to heal
They will be compelled to spend many
| months in the Presidio hospital at San
Francisco before they can resume their
journey to their homes in the Eastern
states. Christenberry comes from
Michigan and Germans home is in
South Carolina. In their journey on
the tug down the river their sufferings
were indescribable. The bones had not
been set, and with each motion of the
tug the shattered fragments of bone
| gritted together, causing excruciating
pain. Edward German has been nine
years in the army and has been
! through the campaigns at Manila and
/ Cuba, having been many times wound
J, ed, but he says that there were more
bullets flying that day at Tientsin than
all the rest put together. Christenberry
was also through the Philippine cam
Ipafgn on skirmish duty. They both ex
press themselves to be unspeakably
glad to be homeward bound. but one
| of them said, 4 would have liked to
have got as far as Peking."
Another victim of that terrible day,
now nearly eight months ago. is A
Richards. who sits propped up in hos
pital chair, just recovering the power
to speak and to feebly move his limbs
about He was sunstruck on the bat
tlefield and remembered no more for
several weeks. When he recovered con-
sciousness he was blind and paralyzed,
unable to move a muscle of his body.
Slowly he began to feel the life within
him and after five months he regained
his eyesight. For month past he has
been able to move his hands about and
for little more than that he has been
able to speak. He is now patiently
sitting in his chair, going through the
process of learning all over again how
to use his hands and limbs. Later he
will learn to walk. He will in time re-
cover the use of all of his faculties, but
he will have clouded memory of those
months of agony and helplessness when
he was blind, speechless and without
the power of motion.
The fourth is J. Mitchell, the hero of
Peking. 1t was he who found in an old
junk shop an old cannon, which had
been used for many years as a hitching
post. He fitted it UP and it is now in
the Smithsonian Institute, cherished as
the gun that saved the legations at
Peking
Before the finding of the gun there
was no weapon of defense larger than
hand rifles within the besieged COM
pound and the seven hundred souls
within the enclosure were at the mercy
of the fendish Boxers had they then
made their attacks upon the fortress
When Mitchell found the old gun 1t had
no mark of any kind upon it, and it
could not be determined where it came
from or of what manufacture it was.
He fitted 1T up and placed it opposite
the Krupp gun of the Boxers which
pointed menacingly from the embank
ment not far away.
When the trouble began in earnest
the old gun was fired by Mitchell, who
was the only man that would approach
it, and the first shot knocked the Chi
nese krupp gun from its place, bat
| tered to pieces and rendered useless.
Mitchell continued to use the old gun
with telling effect until a wholesale re-
spect was inspired in the ranks of the
Boxers outside 1t saved the legations,
| as without it no strong defense could
/ have been made and the seven hundred
| people within the walls would have
been fiendishly murdered long before
the rescuing troops arrived. On the
| last day of the siege. when hope was all
but gone and the women and children
were huddled together in hourly antici-
ipation of death: when the grim men on
/ the defense had consulted and agreed
that that night they must themselves
Ishoot their wives and children to save
them from a worse fate: when the last
despair settled over the compound.
with its seven hundred souls all but
defenseless. Mitchell stood at the old
gun, waiting.
/ Through a hole in the wall he saw
the enemy stealthily gathering and
Emounting a gun. He still waited. and
not until the embankment was black
with their forms did he turn loose the
faithful old nameless gun. Then he
fired two shells and went to the OPEN
ing in the wall to look and behold the
damage he had done There were a
few OF them left They had been creep
ing toward the opening and were only
La few yards away. AS he appeared in
the opening of the wall there was a
rattle of bullets around him as they
struck the wall and his right hand
(which he raised to his eyes to shelter
them while he looked out, fell to his
lside, the bone in his arm shattered. He
Ileaped backward and gave the alarm
Had he proceeded another step he
would have been riddled with bullets
land the old gun would have been minus
la gunner when the rescuing troops
reached there that day. As it is, he
lsays he Will have a good story to tell
when he gets home.
There are over three hundred sailors
of the marine service on board the Sol
ace, all recovering from diseases con-
ltracted in the tropics.
!. Customs Officer Remembered.
Inspector Gomez of the customs de-
Ipartment, who was married the other
|, rica,r =,