"Carabao Bill," from his dress and manner, might be said to be a typical United States Army officer. His figure would probably fall short of the standard, but he was no less strong and healthy than his brother knights of the sword. His strength was more to be compared to that patient animal after which he was nick-named, the mighty carabao, but he lacked the grace of form and dignity of bearing that the average wearer of shoulder-straps in Uncle Sam's army is supposed to possess. The soldiers said he waltzed like a cow and walked like a camel--moving one corner at a time--which was indeed a graphic way of describing his movements. William Van Osdol was his name, and he was a second lieutenant in the --th Infantry. After several months of hard service in the Philippines he earned for himself the unenviable sobriquet of "Carabao Bill," because his awkward movements, ox-like strength, and slow but sure gait were so much like the sturdy animal that formed our "cracker line" that that name could not but suggest itself. In Cuba he served as a sergeant in one of the regular infantry regiments. He was the proud possessor of a bayonet scabbard, several times punctured by Mauser bullets, which he had worn in the charge up San Juan Hill. It was for "gallant and meritorious conduct" during this fight that won for him the recommendation for commissioned rank; and it was but shortly after he had returned from fever-ridden Santiago, when in the hospital at Montauk Point, that the much-coveted document, making him an officer in the United States Army, reached him. Van Osdol was a born fighter. The set of his lower jaw and the quick snap of his light blue eyes left nothing to be guessed at on that line. While he was not a picturesque nor dashing officer, yet his heavy growth of fiery red locks was ever to be seen in the front of the fight and seldom under cover. An Irish corporal, who had once fallen a victim to his disciplining, declared, "The sorril-topped lootenint hain't brains 'nuff to git scart," but this was not true. While not a man renowned for brilliancy of intellect, yet he was a level-headed thinker whose judgment was always good on minor matters. He was frequently selected to conduct scouting expeditions where good "horse sense" and nerve were much more expedient than a superabundance of gray matter abnormally developed with theories of fine tactics and maneuvers.