We had beefsteak, warmed-over pigs' feet, coffee, potato cakes,
fresh lettuce, Graham gems, and two kinds of pie, and the next day
we sailed for Manila.
Them early days in the Fillypines was the toughest proposition I
was ever up against. Things hadn't settled down as they did
afterward, nobody knowing where he was at, and all of us shoved up
to the front higgeldy-piggeldy; and, being Regulars, they gave us
the heavy end of it, having to do all the fighting while the
Volunteers was being taught the difference between a Krag-
Jorgensen and a Moro Castle. It was all front in them days--for
the Regulars! But we were lucky in our commissary sergeant, a
splendid young man named Orr, and we lived well from the start and
never came down to rations. The battery got quite a name for
having griddle-cakes for breakfast and carrying a lot of dog
generally in the eating line, and someone wrote a song, to the
toon of Chickamauga, called "The Fried Chicken of Battery B." But
I tell you, it wasn't all fried chicken either, for the fighting
was heavy and hot, and a good many of the boys pegged out. If ever
there was a battery that looked for trouble and got it--it was
Battery B! But we took good care of our commissary sergeant--did I
mention he was a splendid young man named Orr?--and though we
dropped a good many numbers, wounded, dead, sick, and missing--we
kep' up the good name of the battery and had canned butter and
pop-overs nearly every day.
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