The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1904-09-15
MIMIC WARFARE.
Its Hardships and Privations Hard on
the Undrilled Soldier.

A Washington correspondent OF the
Brooklyn Eagle tells something of the
hsrdships the troops were compelled to
undergo in the recent manoeuvers at
Manassas. The story is in part as
follows:
officers returned from Manassas.
where they observed the manoeuvres
the past three days, tell some pitiful
tales of the sufHerings and hardships
endured by the young and inexperi-
enced soldiers of the National Guard
in the hard fighting that took place.
One officer, who acted as an observer,
said: considered it cruel to
force those boys to go through the re-
view today. They were for the most
part fit for hospitals. have seen q
good deal of campaigning but for the
short period of the manoeuvers at
Manassas do not recall any instance
where men suffered more than the
troops have down on the Virginia
battlefields. I do not refer to the reg
| ulsrs, all of whom were hardened by
months of drill. They went through
the rough work of the week with lit
tie inconvenience. But it was killing
on the soft boys who made up the
bulk Of the State troops. Most of
them were clerks who had had abso-
lutely no preliminary training for this
ordeal They looked on the manoeu-
vers as a pleasant outing. Instead
they found it the most painful, body
racking test of endurance they prob
ably ever had. The generals COM
manding the Blue and the Brown az
| mics did not spare their men, end al
though the campaign lasted only
three days it was pushed at an awful
pace.
Yesterday morning walked out
from Manassas four or five miles in
the direction of Gainesville. l was
simply appalled, by the sights saw.
Literally hundreds and almost thous-
ands OF young soldiers were lying
along the roadway, completely worn
out and exhausted. Their commands
had gone on ahead and left them, too
weak to follow. The country FOR
miles about Manassas was strewn with
national guardsmen who had found
the pace too much for them. The
boys had been going constantly since
midnight Tuesday. Starting out at
that time some of them were marched
for ten or fifteen miles, put through a
lot of exciting and trying evolutions,
and forced to bivouac wherever they
happened to find themselves as night.
Thousands of them went to sleep
without food or water.
The missary wagons, in nu-
merons instances, failed to come up to
the troops. and there was much suffer
ing for lack of water. AS walked
along the road out of Manassas | saw
dozens of soldiers barefooted. Their
feet had swollen to twice the natural
size and were so badly blistered that
shoes could not be tolerated OF
course the hardships of the experience
are good for the men, and I presume
there will be no fatalities. The ma
noeuvers will prove of tremendous val
ne in number of ways. 1t is only
by tests of this kind that our men can
be whipped into shape to do good work
in actual war.
| will never forget the superb con-
dition of the japanese soldier in that
memorable march to the relief of Pc
kin in 1900 1t was only by frequent
drills of the kind just held at Manass-
as that the Japs were able to with
stand the rigors of that campaign,
and to put up the fight in Manchuria
now that is astounding the entire
world.