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Additional ammunition, already issued to the troops, tentage, baggage, and company cooking utensils will be left under charge of the regimental quartermaster, with one non-commissioned officer and two privates from each company.
The fight of La Guasimas emphasized the necessity of getting men to the front. It was no time to delay the movement of troops for the purpose of waiting on wagons, tentage, or rations. The safety of the expedition, the fate of the whole campaign, depended upon energetic and rapid movement to the front.
Through these fog-wreaths there stands revealed a massive barrier of wooded and rock-ribbed heights, towering aloft and shutting out the eastern sky, all their crests a-swim in floating cloud, all their rugged foothills dotted with the tentage of a sleeping army.
Whenever we shifted camp, we had to leave most of our things behind, so that the night before each fight was marked by our sleeping without tentage and with very little food, so far as officers were concerned, as everything had to be sacrificed to getting up what ammunition and medical supplies we had.
When a given article was wanted, whether it was soap, quinine, tentage, or transportation, a requisition upon the chief of the proper bureau at Washington had to be made, with full statement of the reasons for the request; this requisition had to be approved by all intermediate commanders and go through military channels to the chief of the bureau, who might or might not be convinced of the necessity for the article wanted.
The 13th Infantry did not get tentage until the 5th of August. The 20th Infantry and the 3d Infantry obtained a portion of their tentage about the same time, but a large part of these regiments remained under shelter tents until they reembarked. The 1st Illinois and the 34th Michigan remained in shelter tents until the 15th of August, at which time the author embarked for the United States.
Consequently regiments were put forth with only such amounts of rations and tentage as they could carry upon their backs. It will be readily seen that this amount was very limited, and the only tentage possible was the shelter tent.
Shelter tents, or tentage of any kind, our men had no use for, save as sunshades, in Arizona. And with Turner came the first tidings to reach the beleaguered post since the couriers were brought in, with their belated tales, from up the Verde. Turner looked a trifle surprised at the warmth of his greeting. Turner had had little idea of their being so closely invested.
Endorsements thereon by the chief quartermaster of the 5th Corps as late as the 5th of August show that there was no available tentage for issue.
They have had to erect cold storage-plants, with mechanical means for ice-manufacture, of sufficient capacity to hold twenty-five million pounds of beef always in readiness. They are at present constructing two salvage depots which, when completed, will be the largest in the world. Here they will repair and make fit for service again, shoes, harness, clothing, webbing, tentage, rubber-boots, etc.
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