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Updated: June 6, 2025
If your own surgeon-general and the chief surgeon of your own corps advise you officially that the drinking of unboiled water will almost certainly cause disease, why not supply your men with camp-kettles? I can think of only three possible answers to these questions.
The subdued sounds of rousing broke into a loud buzz of active preparation, as the men busied themselves in bundling up blankets, carrying down camp-kettles to the lake, launching the boats, kicking up lazy comrades, stumbling over and swearing at fallen trees which were not visible in the cold, uncertain light of the early dawn, searching hopelessly, among a tangled conglomeration of leaves and broken branches and crushed herbage, for lost pipes and missing tobacco-pouches.
Meanwhile the camp-kettles were suspended over the fire, but they were expressly forbidden to use their bayonets for this purpose as it destroyed their temper. It was about seven o'clock, and we all thought that the battle would be at St. Amand.
If the road from Siboney to the front was practicable for both pack-mules and wagons from the time when the army landed to the time when its base of supplies was transferred to Santiago, and if, as General Shafter asserts, "the facilities were all there, and the transportation equipment provided was all that it should have been," why was the army left for almost a month without suitable tents, without adequate hospital supplies, without camp-kettles, without cooking-utensils other than tin plates, coffee-cups, and old tomato-cans, without hammocks, without extra clothing or spare blankets, and with only a limited supply of food?
Nearly all our water was used in the preparation of breakfast, except that in the canteens. It would have been better if we had made a third trip to the cisterns and refilled our coffee-pot and camp-kettles; but the delay necessary to do it, and the assurance that there was water at Hole-in-the-Plain, determined me to go on at once.
Long Bear himself sat in front of his lodge, cross-legged and moody, all the forenoon: his children were away from him, on a visit to the pale-faces; his ponies were away upon another visit, he could not guess with whom; his dogs, with the solitary exception of One-eye, had all visited the camp-kettles.
Then, what Captain Fairfax called 'the reflex action in the laws o' motion' happened, and darned if the hull blamed procession didn't sweep back again this time all the heavy artillery, such as camp-kettles, lager beer kegs, bottles, glasses, and crockery that was left behind takin' the lead now, and Judge Piper and that ice cream can bringin' up the rear.
There were five of them pitched upon the open prairie, and in them we found the bodies of nine Sioux laid out upon the ground, wrapped in their robes of buffalo-skin, with their saddles, spears, camp-kettles, and all their accoutrements piled up around them. Some lodges contained three, others only one body, all of which were more or less in a state of decomposition.
A majority of the emigrants were seated on logs brought thither for that purpose, and feasting quietly from several large pans and well-filled camp-kettles, which were set out for all in common. They motioned Glenn to partake with them; and although many curious looks were directed toward him, yet he was not annoyed by questions while eating.
They were not half equipped, nor half fed, nor half cared for when they were wounded or sick; they had to sleep in dog-kennel shelter-tents, which afforded little or no protection from tropical rains; they had to cook in coffee-cups and old tomato-cans because they had no camp-kettles; they never had a change of underclothing after they landed; they were forced to drink brook-water that was full of disease-germs because they had no suitable vessels in which to boil it or keep it after it had been boiled; they lived a large part of the time on hard bread and bacon, without beans, rice, or any of the other articles which go to make up the full army ration; and when wounded they had to wait hours for surgical aid, and then, half dead from pain and exhaustion, they lay all night on the water-soaked ground, without shelter, blanket, pillow, food, or attendance.
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