Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1908-08-09

from the Top Soldier or the Whole
Bunch and assurance that you will have
a tent and food-written assurance,
mind you-you would also have a
place to sleep. A bed or a cot, you
know.
Sleeping on the Cold Ground.
But nothing of the sort occurred to
this war correspondent When he
! reached Fort Hunt he had made the
acquaintance of several officers Of the
guard, each one of whom had assured
him that in case of any slip up. why,
I'll fix it up, old man: Just come around
TO see me. You know ! have full
charge" Consequently when he looked
into his little brown tent and saw a
nice square space of hard ground he
began to get anxious about the bed.
Some one told him to go to Lieut.
Smith Lieut.. Smith said. ''Oh. yes
and promptly walked off. Then some
one suggested Lieut.. Green of the regu-
lar army. Lieut.. Green said that the
provost quartermaster's assistant de-
tailed in the cot section of the equipage
commissary was the man tc see So he
was seen, but that officer demanded
that written order from the COM
mander OF the post or the President of
the United States be produced before
ne gave up one of his precious cots.
So the commander of the post was
reached, and he said he would see that
cot was furnished by the jumping
Jehoshaphat," and If 1T was not furnish
ed In twenty minutes to come again
so the war correspondent came again
and again and again and again. And at
each time the commander of the post said
"Oh, that's so, you want cOt?" and
scrubbed memorandum on a piece of
paper, until the string Of cot memoran-
dums looked like the manuscript for a
novel.
But at IL o'clock at night. when a bugIer
blows taps and all the post goes to sleep.
there was no cot. Nothing but mother
earth and q poncho
Old soldiers said the next morning that
the correspondent should have dug a lit
tie hole in the ground for his hip bone.
That would have saved witch hazel and
bandages and trip to the doctor.
The Regular Army, Oh!
Bitter indeed is the way the regular
army officers treat the man who plays
war correspondent Unlike the unfaiing
friend of the press who wants to tell all
he knows and only asks that his name be
printed in the paper, the regular army Of
ficer regards the newspaper correspondent
at the maneuvers as the only real enemy
in the field. He is treated as spy and
a camp follower and has hard time of
it. The regular officer is afraid that the
newspapers will print something about
him that will interfere with his efficiency
record He is afraid that the war cor
res pondent will sit down in his tent and
write a highly original and entirely fic-
titious account of how Maj. Biggs went
TO Marshall Hall and imbibed long and
deeply and broke the heads of two en-
listed men who were detailed by the cor
poral of the guard to go get him. If a
correspondent Is introduced to an army
officer he will be asked If he wrote that
article about hazing cadets at West Point
or whether he has ever seen a soldier be-
lone hn
lar will begin to get frightfully nervous
and suddenly recollect that he has a mill
tary duty to perform in some distant spot
and the correspondent is left alone.
There Is another thing that bothers the
correspondent. 1t Is the calls. Thirty-siX
calls on a bugle a day, each one meaning
a different thing. is too much. First. at
the unearthly and unheard-of hour OF ,
clock they blow a thing called reveille.
Not content with that, they fire off a can
non. and after that drum corps, twenty
nine men, plays tune that has no va
riations from one end to the other All
around the camp they march like a pack
of fools beating on drums and blowing on
Ndfes. When the fifes get tired the bugles
take it up-but they never stop until
every hope of sleep has fled.
Turning Out at 5 A. M.
Out into the company streets the poor
enlisted men poured with breeches on
and maybe shirts-its too dark to see
just what they have on. and they go
through with thing called setting up
No. not what you are thinking of at all.
This has nothing to do with Set EN- up
again." This is series of physical cul-
ture movements that racks the bones and
brings the explosives to the dainty lips of
those camp-hardened darlings The COR
respondent may be wakened at o'clock,
but he can stand in his tent door in pa
jamas and yawn with ease as he sees
the sun breaking in its glory and shining
down upon the enlisted men as they go