World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives, American
My own regiment, the Twenty-sixth Infantry, entrained early in June at
San Benito, Texas, and came to the port of embarkation, New York City.
The trip always stands out in my mind, although I did not join the
regiment until after it had arrived in Europe, because all through the
two years of war I was pestered by a paper which kept constantly turning
up concerning some $100 worth of ham and cheese that was supposed to
have been eaten by the men of the Twenty-sixth Infantry as they passed
through Houston. No one was ever able to furnish me with any information
as to it, but in the best approved military style the communication kept
circulating to and fro, indorsement after indorsement being added,
until, when I last saw it, January, 1919, after the war was finished,
there were some twenty-eight series of remarks, and no one was any the
wiser.
A story that always appealed to me was told me by one of my officers, of
the time when the troop train was lying in the Jersey marshes waiting to
go on board ship. A very good officer, Arnold by name, had command of
one of the companies of the Twenty-sixth Infantry. A number of
lieutenants were sent from the training camps to join the First
Division. The military knowledge of the lieutenants consisted in the
main of a month at Plattsburg at their own expense, and a month for
which the government paid. The lieutenants, after getting to New York,
had their uniforms pressed and cleaned and their shoes beautifully
polished, feeling that at least they would look the part. They went out
to join the troops, who were lying in the cars, hot, dirty and
uncomfortable, after traveling for four days. Arnold was sitting with
his company, his blouse off, unshaven, with his feet on the seat in
front of him. One of the nice young lieutenants came in to report to him
looking, as the lieutenant himself told me afterward, like a fashionable
clothes advertisement, and knowing about as much about military matters
as a canary bird.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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