The Washington herald., 1913-01-09
THE OPEN FORUM
SPANISH WAR PENSIONS.
Veteran Makes Comparison with the
Civil War.

To the Editor: I have a few things to
say regarding your editorial in The
Herald Of the 9TH instant relative to
Cuban VS.. civil war pensions.
You forget the war with Spain, the
Boxer rebellion in China. and the Phil
ippine insurrection. lasting in all more
than four years.
You speak of ninety days service. How
about the sixty-day. the ninety-day vet
Grams of the civil war, who never fired
a shot or faced a bullet? Are they not
literally pensioned by our government?
Also how about those who were barely
mustered into the service when Lee gave
up the fight as hopeless?
The Spanish war was marked by COM
paratively few casualties. Have you
counted the men who died in the mobIli-
zation camps? These forever will be a
shame and disgrace to the richest gov
ernment on the earth. which, with all
her vast wealth, made men in the home
land subsist on half and even one-third
rations without proper medical service.
Have you counted the men who died
of wounds and those who died from
tropical diseases and added all these to
those who died in action?
As to your comparison of the partici-
pants in the war with Spain and the
heroes CD who sacrificed health and
limbs in the deadly ~ civil strife:
Please give us exact percentage Of cas-
ualties of the civil war out OF the num-
ber mustered into the service and then
the same of the Spanish war. China re-
bellion, and Philippine insurrection.
You will evidently be surprised TO find
the percentages in favor of the younger
veterans.
We know what the civil war veterans
endured, and would take no just honor
from them, but when the claim is made
that there was never any soldiers like
them in all history We do resent the
statement.
My own regiment went to Cuba with
1.5OO men. lost some: went to the Philip
pines, losing some more: then to China
in 1900. losing some additional; hack to
the Philippines for two years, and then
came home with 562 men.
Some of the things we endured: Before
Santiago, Cuba; peril OF land and of sea;
tropical climates for more than four
years, with all the attendant fevers and
plaques; dry and wet seasons; often dur
ing the wet seasons going for months at
a time without dry clothes; planting out
posts in the Islands: a native crawling
up, boloing the sentry and numbering the
'
warning, and the cutting down of the
sentry. not to his face. but in the back,
and often being fifteen or twenty feet
away. hurting the bolo and severing the
head of the sentry; then set their bam-
boo guns with time fuses, all arranged
to seem identical with the tropical un-
dergrowth, and when the troops arrived
almost at it crash, an explosion, and
one or two more men bite the dust with
out an enemy in sight.
Keeping on, a soldiers arm would
brush a twig which would spring the
trap for a poisoned spear and another
son of America would die, but still no
enemy to fight; then coming to an open
ing we would receive a volley, the COM
mand to deploy as skirmishers would be
quickly given, when We would get an
other volley, followed by a command to
charge. every man with set face and fix
ed bayonet springing forward with the
Yankee yell on his lips and look, behold
a ditch unperceivable to the advancing
troops and one to a dozen men fall on
poisoned spears, the other men leap over
the ditch, and the natives flee, but only
to a rice field. when, they give a fresh
volley as another reception. and when
the troops follow into the swampy rice
field and get fast in the mud: then the
natives put UP a good fight, at least
from their point of view.
All this to contend with and not have
fair chance to meet the enemy. In
the civil war both sides had men to
fight who fought fair. and the strain we
endured was unknown to them. But then
there was another side, We did fight
some ] think, in Cuba yes, a good en-
gagement; in. the Philippines / was in
2s5 skirmishes and engagements and was
not in them alone. either; in China I
fought at Tientsin for twenty-eight hours.
| at Piet Sang for seven hours: at Matou
for four hours. at Tong Chow for five