The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1903-05-24

Ieu ndQ at least ten relatives TO mourn
him. Each soldier that lives has at
least ten kinsfolk to honor him; and
so four millions of people-one in every
twenty in the country-have leavened
the whole body polite and given
more serious note to Memorial Day
since the late war than was present
for many years before on the anniver-
sary of the dead. This is the testl-
mony of Grand Army posts and Of
Memorial Day speakers throughout the
country.
why the New Spirit Has Arisen.
Their testimony could not be other
wise. A soldier can never forget the
days of his service; he cannot be en-
listed a month without hearing in
camp or in battle the benediction of
the bugle over the body of some COM
rade-in- arms; and, though unconscious
it may be, the thought is never from
him that the same call that puts him
to sleep nightly with lights out on the
morrow may lull him to his eternal
slumber. 1t is the contact with death
and its militant song that brings home
to him the deep significance of the day
of the hero dead and causes its proper
observance by him and his.
Ask any of these men who are re-
sponsible for the new spirit of Me-
mortal Day-or the old one reviviscent
! of the year to him, and the answer very
likely will be in the form of an Incl
| dent of the mans campaigning days.
And If member of a certain regiment
that served in Porto Rico is question
ed, his reply most probably would con-
tain the following story:
A story of the New Spirits Cause.
For days the regiment had encamp-
ed on the brow of a hill overlooking
| the sea, waiting for the transport that
was to take it home. AS the soldiers
waited and swept the horizon for their
ship they worked in the cemetery that
had been laid out to receive the soldier
dead from over the island. They were
kept busy. A day did not pass with
out one or more burial squads being
| detailed to give decent interment to
some poor devil" whose body had been
| brought on mule back or in army wag-
on from a camp in the interior or who
| had died in the regiments own hos
pital on the sun-baked slope, So it
came to pass that at any hour of the
day during the weeks that the regi-
ment sat on the hill no one was sur
prised to hear taps come to him from
| through the tropical air from over the
grave of newly laid soldier less than
/ a mile away.
At last, Unexpectedly and after the
|
getting off the island in time to spend
! Thanksgiving in Gods country" the
transport steamed into the harbor, and
the order was given to break camp the
next morning at 8, that the soldiers
might be spared from the beating rays
of the sun as much as possible.
1t was when camp was broken, ev-
erything packed in knapsack and wag-
| on, and everybody, hilarious at the
prospect of sailing, lounging and wait
ing in the shade of piles of baggage for
the word of command to fall in in the
| company streets. And then, when
| chaff and banter were at their hight
word was passed along that up in Com
pany B soldier, overcome at the
thought of seeing his invalid mother,
had dropped dead of heart disease just
as he had finished packing his KNAPP
sack.
Parade-and Taps.
A soldier is not afraid of death when
the heat of battle is on him. but in
| truding when his arms are stacked it
sobers him. There was not a sign Of
merriment over leaving the island, as,
| shortly after the news had spread.
burial detail started for the cemetery
with the mans body in a mule wagon.
| 1t was a solemn-faced regiment that
| the colonel beheld a quarter of an hour
later when it was drawn up before
him for the final parade. 1t was
brighter regiment when the band had
paraded and finished playing THE Star
Spangled Banner" as the flag came
down, and it was almost it's normal
self when, with the officers of the line
and the first sergeants in their places
again, it stood expectantly waiting for
the word of command that would swing
it down the hill-homeward.
The colonel drew his sword and
| flashed it to position.
INSTRUMENTATION he com
manded. "Fours-"
He got no further. That instant
there came to him the notes of a bugle
taps was being played over the grave
of the comrade who had dropped dead
an hour before. And as the call cut
short the colone1s order and stopped
| his mouth, so it wrung an audible gasp
of sympathy from the stolid double line
of blue.
Not a man moved while the music
lasted or it's echo could be heard MAX
ing its way up the mountains at the
camps rear. Nor for almost a minute
after the faintest reverberations had
died away did officer or private move
or look to right or left.
The Message of the Grave,
Then the colonel gave the interrupt
ed order, and the regiment swung down
to the sea to the strains of Home,
Sweet Home" But intermingled IN
many a marchers mind with the bars
of the song that has brought tears
even to the eyes of savages, were the
notes that had sounded over the grave
as he had paraded at the top of the
hill.
From such incidents the new spirit
of Memorial Day has sprung, and by
| such incidents it will be kept alive I'M
til the young men of the Spanish
American War organizations, who will
decorate the graves of their dead, are
as decimated by time as are the ranks
of the Grand Army of the Republic
that will march behind battle SCARED