Captain James A. McKenna of Company D is a lawyer—Harvard and Fordham produced him. He is a fellow of great ability, ambitious, energetic and enduring. He will go far in any line he may choose, and as a soldier he will score a high mark. He has fine ideals and fine sentiments which he chooses to conceal under a playfully aggressive or business-like demeanor. But his enthusiasms, patriotic, religious, personal, are the true fundaments of him, and everybody feels it. He lets himself out most in his affection for his men who reciprocate his devotion. Company D under Jim McKenna will play a big part in our annals of war. Alexander E. Anderson of Company E is a 69th man by heredity. His uncle, Colonel Duffy, commanded the Regiment in 1898. His cousin, Major John Duffy, was in the Regiment when Anderson was old enough to join it—and he joined it as a private just as soon as they would let him. He is a soldier through and through. His family and his business are near to him, but the 69th is first in his thoughts. He has gone through all the stages from private to captain without any family favoritism and today he stands out as the keenest Captain in the Regiment. He went to an Officer’s Training School two years ago and graduated with a hundred percent. Sometimes they call him the 100 percent soldier, a title which grates on him exceedingly, for he hates such labels of praise, whether meant or not. Colonel Hine has asked me for the names of three Captains who might be recommended for Majors in emergency. I told him I would name only one, and after that one, half a dozen or more. “Oh,” he said, “you mean Anderson. That is what the Battalion Commanders all say.” Captain Michael Kelly is an old soldier, though not an old man. He can wear military medals on dress-suit occasions which puzzle even the experts. A County Clare man by birth, he was drawn by fighting instincts as a youth into the British Army, since there was no Irish Army organized, and fought through the Boer War and Burmese campaigns. In New York he is second in command of the aqueduct police and a Captain of the 69th, succeeding Captain P. J. Maguire, who gave up his beloved Company F with satisfaction only because it fell to his trusted Lieutenant. Captain Kelly is a soldier first, last and all the time. His spear knoweth no brother. He visits infractions of military discipline with sternness and vigor. His Company stands in awe of him, and boasts of him to others. They are well looked after. If I have anything to distribute I have to keep an eye on him and Anderson, the two tyrants amongst Company Commanders. Give them their way and everything would go to Companies E and F, with a humorous growl between the two as to who gets the most of the spoils.