Military Training Camp for Business and Professional Men (Plattsburgh, N.Y.); Military education -- Fiction; New York (State) -- Fiction
Today's work will not make an interesting story. We followed our south
road till it petered out, passed through pretty glades and around
attractive knolls, and finally climbed a steep ascent to where, by a
schoolhouse at a corner, we rested for a while. A platoon was sent north
against a squad of cavalry; the rest went on, deployed here, deployed
there, sent out squads and recalled them, then lay low in ditches and
watched the movements of some of the enemy (horsemen and a machine gun)
cautiously coming forward along a crossroad against the corner toward
which we were heading, and which we knew to be held in strength by our
first platoon. They consulted, came on within range, and then sent out a
man to reconnoitre. Reaching the corner, he wheeled and dashed back,
waving his hat and shouting. A burst of fire from the corner pursued him;
and our Squad Seven, crazy to do something, let off a couple of clips at
the men on the machine gun, who were frantically trying to turn it about.
The cavalry got away, all but their messenger, who was summoned back. As
for the machine gun, it would not reconcile itself to capture till, as
the captain said, an umpire went out and picked it by hand.
We were given another rest, this time by an odd-looking building which
Corder guessed was a creamery. The fact being established, our boys were
greatly excited, and some filled their canteens at wholesale
prices--surreptitiously, for the thing was quite as wrong though not so
reckless as another performance I have seen, the filling of canteens at
wells. If we escape typhoid from such water it will be because of the
inoculation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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