~*~
Finally, officially and literally, the campaign had come to a close.
Chapter Twenty-Three – The Traditions Continue
Corporal Thomas Saxon, his new stripes fixed solidly on his arm, stood at the dock watching as the steamer eased closer across the waters of the Tongue River.
Tommy wore the brand new uniform recently issued to him to replace the one ruined during the long march. He’d used some of the pay raise in his promotion from private to noncommissioned officer—an increase of thirteen dollars to fifteen dollars per month—to have the post tailor cut it down to fit well. Now, natty in shiny shoes and belt, with a new, freshly creased campaign hat sitting jauntily on his head, the junior NCO waited for the riverboat to go through its docking procedures.
In five short minutes after the gangplank was thrown out, the newly arrived recruits and replacements, fresh from the infantry depots back east, marched off the boat and onto the wharf. Tommy strode forward to meet them.
“Fall in!” he barked. “Quickly! Quickly! Didn’t they teach you nothing at Columbus Barracks and David’s Island?” He waited impatiently as the men shuffled into a formation. He could spot the old soldiers by the way they easily arranged themselves in the proper fashion. Tommy gave them all a long glare, walking back and forth in front of them. Finally he commanded, “Stand at ease!”
The men relaxed, looking at him in anticipation for whatever was going to happen.
“My name is Corp’ral Saxon. I am here to welcome you to Fort Keogh and to our regiment in particular. You have been assigned to L Comp’ny,” Tommy announced. “We’ve just got back from a campaign in which we lost thirty-seven men out of forty-six.” He paused, enjoying the disturbed look on some of the new arrivals. “If you think that means we were poor fighters, you’re damned mistaken. We faced over a thousand Sioux warriors down and fought so hard that at the end they saluted us and rode away.” He walked about some more letting that bit of news sink in. “But we still want to avenge them thirty-seven fellers that got kilt.” Now he shouted. “And that’s what you’re here for! And, by God, your only purpose in life from this point on is to march with the comp’ny back out there and get the rest o’ them Sioux! That’s all us old soldiers has been thinking about and that’s all you recruits is gonna think about too!”
The story of Riker’s column had already spread through several western garrisons and the batch of recruits had heard embellished and exaggerated accounts of the incident. They were impressed.
“Now. I’m gonna take you—” Tommy stopped speaking when he noticed an older soldier in the second rank. “You! What’s your name?”
“Duncan, Corp’ral,” the man answered.
“Wasn’t you a sergeant at Columbus Barracks?” Tommy asked.
Somebody laughed. “Yeah, Corp’ral, ’til they caught him and the sutler cheating the recruits.”
Tommy grinned. “Got yourself busted down, did you, Duncan?”
“Yes, Corp’ral,” Duncan answered sullenly. “And I’m shipped out to a line regiment too.”
“I remember you, Duncan,” Tommy said in a coldly gleeful manner. “I went through recruit drill under you. So I’m gonna give you special attention.”
“I been a private before,” Duncan said. “Soldiering is something I’ve done plenty of.”
“But not under this corp’ral by God!” Tommy shouted. He enjoyed the ex-sergeant’s look of discomfiture. “Now! Let’s get you men up to the barracks and settled in.” He took a deep breath. “Detail, atten-hut! Shoulder your gear! Right face! For’d, march!”
The detachment of new men marched to Tommy’s shouted cadence, the new men doing their best to keep in step while they paraded through the garrison. As they passed the guardhouse, Mack Baker stared through the barred windows of his cell at them. His bloodshot eyes burned and the monstrous pain of his hangover pounded through his head. But he grinned to himself.
“I wonder if any of them new fellers would loan me the price of a bottle o’ whiskey when I get outta here,” he said to himself.
The recruits went out of sight on their way to their new martial abode. There would be only a short time to run them through dry-firing exercises before they went into the field for active campaigning.
Post Script
CAPTAIN CHARLES RIKER retired from the army with the rank of major in 1890. He and his wife moved to Saint Paul, Minnesota, where the major went into business with his eldest son, operating a variety theater in Minneapolis. He died in Saint Paul in 1924 at the age of 86.
FIRST SERGEANT GORDON ROBERTSON was murdered by another sergeant at Fort Robinson, Nebraska in 1883. The crime was the result of an altercation over the attentions that Robertson was showing the other NCO’s wife.
SERGEANT KARL SCHREINER left the army in 1887. He moved to a German-American community in North Dakota, married and raised a large family while prospering as a farmer. He passed away in 1948, aged 96 years.
CORPORAL CHARLES O’MALLEY remained in the army. He retired with the rank of regimental sergeant major in 1895. He died in 1931 in Lawton, Oklahoma, at the age of 76.
CORPORAL THOMAS SAXON took his honorable discharge from the army in 1885. He returned to Ohio where he became active in the state militia while going into business as a merchant. He married and fathered a large family. Saxon saw active service again in 1898 in the Spanish-American War as a lieutenant colonel and second-in-command of a volunteer infantry regiment. He served once more in World War I as a brigadier general in the Ohio National Guard. The general passed away in 1955 at the age of 93.
TRUMPETER UZIEL MELECH eventually took his discharge from the army. In 1889 he settled in Wichita, Kansas, where he became a music teacher. Melech never remarried, but lived a long and full life forming several musical organizations and concerts in that city over the years. He died in 1937 at the age of 92. A street and an elementary school in Wichita were named in his honor.
PRIVATE MACK BAKER, because of bad health, petitioned for admittance to the Old Soldiers Home in Washington, D.C., in 1891 after twenty years of service. He expired from acute alcoholism in 1893 when 41 years old.
PRIVATE GEORGE CALLAN quickly worked his way back up to the rank of sergeant. He was killed in action during the year following L Company’s return to Fort Keogh.
PRIVATE HAROLD DEVLIN finished out his army career on detached service as post librarian at Fort Keogh. After an honorable discharge he went to California and eventually settled into the banking business in San Francisco, where he married into a prominent local family. He and his wife raised a family of two daughters and a son. When he was killed in the Great Earthquake of 1906, he was 51 years old and the vice president of the Commerce and Merchant’s Bank of that city.
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