Books: Notes of a War Correspondent
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Richard Harding Davis >> Notes of a War Correspondent
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Here we agreed to separate. We had heard a marvellous tale that at
New-Chwang there was ice, champagne, and a hotel with enamelled bath-
tubs. We had unceasingly discussed the probability of this being
true, and what we would do with these luxuries if we got them, and
when we came so near to where they were supposed to be, it was agreed
that one of us would ride on ahead and command them, while the others
followed with the carts. The lucky number fell to John Fox, and he
left us at a gallop. He was to engage rooms for the four, and to
arrange for the care of seven Japanese interpreters and servants,
nine Chinese coolies, and nineteen horses and mules. We expected
that by eight o'clock we would be eating the best dinner John Fox
could order. We were mistaken. Not that John Fox had not ordered
the dinner, but no one ate it but John Fox. The very minute he left
us Priory's cart turned turtle in the mud, and the largest of his
four mules lay down in it and knocked off work. The mule was hot and
very tired, and the mud was soft, cool, and wet, so he burrowed under
its protecting surface until all we could see of him was his ears.
The coolies shrieked at him, Prior issued ultimatums at him, the
Japanese servants stood on dry land fifteen feet away and talked
about him, but he only snuggled deeper into his mud bath. When there
is no more of a mule to hit than his ears, he has you at a great
disadvantage, and when the coolies waded in and tugged at his head,
we found that the harder they tugged, the deeper they sank. When
they were so far out of sight that we were in danger of losing them
too, we ordered them to give up the struggle and unload the cart.
Before we got it out of dry-dock, reloaded, and again in line with
the other carts it was nine o clock, and dark.
In the meantime, Lynch, his sense of duty weakened by visions of
enamelled bathtubs filled with champagne and floating lumps of ice,
had secretly abandoned us, stealing away in the night and leaving us
to follow. This, not ten minutes after we had started, Mr. Prior
decided that he would not do, so he camped out with the carts in a
village, while, dinnerless, supperless, and thirsty, I rode on alone.
I reached New-Chwang at midnight, and after being refused admittance
by the Japanese soldiers, was finally rescued by the Number One man
from the Manchuria Hotel, who had been sent out by Fox with two sikhs
and a lantern to find me. For some minutes I dared not ask him the
fateful questions. It was better still to hope than to put one's
fortunes to the test. But I finally summoned my courage.
"Ice, have got?" I begged.
"Have got," he answered.
There was a long, grateful pause, and then in a voice that trembled,
I again asked, "Champagne, have got?"
Number One man nodded.
"Have got," he said.
I totally forgot until the next morning to ask about the enamelled
bathtubs.
When I arrived John Fox had gone to bed, and as it was six weeks
since any of us had seen a real bed, I did not wake him. Hence, he
did not know I was in the hotel, and throughout the troubles that
followed I slept soundly.
Meanwhile, Lynch, as a punishment for running away from us, lost his
own way, and, after stumbling into an old sow and her litter of pigs,
which on a dark night is enough to startle any one, stumbled into a
Japanese outpost, was hailed as a Russian spy, and made prisoner.
This had one advantage, as he now was able to find New-Chwang, to
which place he was marched, closely guarded, arriving there at half-
past two in the morning. Since he ran away from us he had been
wandering about on foot for ten hours. He sent a note to Mr. Little,
the British Consul, and to Bush Brothers, the kings of New-Chwang,
and, still tormented by visions of ice and champagne, demanded that
his captors take him to the Manchuria Hotel. There he swore they
would find a pass from Fukushima allowing him to enter New-Chwang,
three friends who could identify him, four carts, seven servants,
nine coolies, and nineteen animals. The commandant took him to the
Manchuria Hotel, where instead of this wealth of corroborative detail
they found John Fox in bed. As Prior, the only one of us not in New-
Chwang, had the pass from Fukushima, permitting us to enter it, there
was no one to prove what either Lynch or Fox said, and the officer
flew into a passion and told Fox he would send both of them out of
town on the first train. Mr. Fox was annoyed at being pulled from
his bed at three in the morning to be told he was a Russian spy, so
he said that there was not a train fast enough to get him out of New-
Chwang as quickly as he wanted to go, or, for that matter, out of
Japan and away from the Japanese people. At this the officer, being
a Yale graduate, and speaking very pure English, told Mr. Fox to
"shut up," and Mr. Fox being a Harvard graduate, with an equally
perfect command of English, pure and undefiled, shook his fist in the
face of the Japanese officer and told him to "shut up yourself."
Lynch, seeing the witness he had summoned for the defence about to
plunge into conflict with his captor, leaped unhappily from foot to
foot, and was heard diplomatically suggesting that all hands should
adjourn for ice and champagne.
"If I were a spy," demanded Fox, "do you suppose I would have ridden
into your town on a white horse and registered at your head-quarters
and then ordered four rooms at the principal hotel and accommodations
for seven servants, nine coolies, and nineteen animals? Is that the
way a Russian spy works? Does he go around with a brass band?"
The officer, unable to answer in kind this excellent reasoning, took
a mean advantage of his position by placing both John and Lynch under
arrest, and at the head of each bed a Japanese policeman to guard
their slumbers. The next morning Prior arrived with the pass, and
from the decks of the first out-bound English steamer Fox hurled
through the captain's brass speaking-trumpet our farewells to the
Japanese, as represented by the gun-boats in the harbor. Their
officers, probably thinking his remarks referred to floating mines,
ran eagerly to the side. But our ship's captain tumbled from the
bridge, rescued his trumpet, and begged Fox, until we were under the
guns of a British man-of-war, to issue no more farewell addresses.
The next evening we passed into the Gulf of Pe-chi-li, and saw above
Port Arthur the great guns flashing in the night, and the next day we
anchored in the snug harbor of Chefoo.
I went at once to the cable station to cable Collier's I was
returning, and asked the Chinaman in charge if my name was on his
list of those correspondents who could send copy collect. He said it
was; and as I started to write, he added with grave politeness, "I
congratulate you."
For a moment I did not lift my eyes. I felt a chill creeping down my
spine. I knew what sort of a blow was coming, and I was afraid of
it.
"Why?" I asked.
The Chinaman bowed and smiled.
"Because you are the first," he said. "You are the only
correspondent to arrive who has seen the battle of Liao-Yang."
The chill turned to a sort of nausea. I knew then what disaster had
fallen, but I cheated myself by pretending the man was misinformed.
"There was no battle," I protested. "The Japanese told me themselves
they had entered Liao-Yang without firing a shot." The cable
operator was a gentleman. He saw my distress, saw what it meant and
delivered the blow with the distaste of a physician who must tell a
patient he cannot recover. Gently, reluctantly, with real sympathy
he said, "They have been fighting for six days."
I went over to a bench, and sat down; and when Lynch and Fox came in
and took one look at me, they guessed what had happened. When the
Chinaman told them of what we had been cheated, they, in their turn,
came to the bench, and collapsed. No one said anything. No one even
swore. Six months we had waited only to miss by three days the
greatest battle since Gettysburg and Sedan. And by a lie.
For six months we had tasted all the indignities of the suspected
spy, we had been prisoners of war, we had been ticket-of-leave men,
and it is not difficult to imagine our glad surprise that same day
when we saw in the harbor the white hull of the cruiser Cincinnati
with our flag lifting at her stern. We did not know a soul on board,
but that did not halt us. As refugees, as fleeing political
prisoners, as American slaves escaping from their Japanese jailers,
we climbed over the side and demanded protection and dinner. We got
both. Perhaps it was not good to rest on that bit of drift-wood,
that atom of our country that had floated far from the mainland and
now formed an island of American territory in the harbor of Chefoo.
Perhaps we were not content to sit at the mahogany table in the
glistening white and brass bound wardroom surrounded by those eager,
sunburned faces, to hear sea slang and home slang in the accents of
Maine, Virginia, and New York City. We forgot our dark-skinned
keepers with the slanting, suspicious, unfriendly eyes, with tongues
that spoke the one thing and meant the other. All the memories of
those six months of deceit, of broken pledges, of unnecessary
humiliations, of petty unpoliteness from a half-educated, half-bred,
conceited, and arrogant people fell from us like a heavy knapsack.
We were again at home. Again with our own people. Out of the happy
confusion of that great occasion I recall two toasts. One was
offered by John Fox. "Japan for the Japanese, and the Japanese for
Japan." Even the Japanese wardroom boy did not catch its
significance. The other was a paraphrase of a couplet in reference
to our brown brothers of the Philippines first spoken in Manila. "To
the Japanese: 'They may be brothers to Commodore Perry, but they
ain't no brothers of mine.'"
It was a joyous night. Lieutenant Gilmore, who had been an historic
prisoner in the Philippines, so far sympathized with our escape from
the Yellow Peril as to intercede with the captain to extend the rules
of the ship. And those rules that were incapable of extending broke.
Indeed, I believe we broke everything but the eight-inch gun. And
finally we were conducted to our steamer in a launch crowded with
slim-waisted, broad-chested youths in white mess jackets, clasping
each other's shoulders and singing, "Way down in my heart, I have a
feeling for you, a sort of feeling for you"; while the officer of the
deck turned his back, and discreetly fixed his night glass upon a
suspicious star.
It was an American cruiser that rescued this war correspondent from
the bondage of Japan. It will require all the battle-ships in the
Japanese navy to force him back to it.
A WAR CORRESPONDENT'S KIT
I am going to try to describe some kits and outfits I have seen used
in different parts of the world by travellers and explorers, and in
different campaigns by army officers and war correspondents. Among
the articles, the reader may learn of some new thing which, when next
he goes hunting, fishing, or exploring, he can adapt to his own uses.
That is my hope, but I am sceptical. I have seldom met the man who
would allow any one else to select his kit, or who would admit that
any other kit was better than the one he himself had packed. It is a
very delicate question. The same article that one declares is the
most essential to his comfort, is the very first thing that another
will throw into the trail. A man's outfit is a matter which seems to
touch his private honor. I have heard veterans sitting around a
camp-fire proclaim the superiority of their kits with a jealousy,
loyalty, and enthusiasm they would not exhibit for the flesh of their
flesh and the bone of their bone. On a campaign, you may attack a
man's courage, the flag he serves, the newspaper for which he works,
his intelligence, or his camp manners, and he will ignore you; but if
you criticise his patent water-bottle he will fall upon you with both
fists. So, in recommending any article for an outfit, one needs to
be careful. An outfit lends itself to dispute, because the selection
of its component parts is not an exact science. It should be, but it
is not. A doctor on his daily rounds can carry in a compact little
satchel almost everything he is liable to need; a carpenter can stow
away in one box all the tools of his trade. But an outfit is not
selected on any recognized principles. It seems to be a question
entirely of temperament. As the man said when his friends asked him
how he made his famous cocktail, "It depends on my mood." The truth
is that each man in selecting his outfit generally follows the lines
of least resistance. With one, the pleasure he derives from his
morning bath outweighs the fact that for the rest of the day he must
carry a rubber bathtub. Another man is hearty, tough, and inured to
an out-of-door life. He can sleep on a pile of coal or standing on
his head, and he naturally scorns to carry a bed. But another man,
should he sleep all night on the ground, the next day would be of no
use to himself, his regiment, or his newspaper. So he carries a
folding cot and the more fortunate one of tougher fibre laughs at
him. Another man says that the only way to campaign is to travel
"light," and sets forth with rain-coat and field-glass. He honestly
thinks that he travels light because his intelligence tells him it is
the better way; but, as a matter of fact, he does so because he is
lazy. Throughout the entire campaign he borrows from his friends,
and with that camaraderie and unselfishness that never comes to the
surface so strongly as when men are thrown together in camp, they
lend him whatever he needs. When the war is over, he is the man who
goes about saying: "Some of those fellows carried enough stuff to
fill a moving van. Now, look what I did. I made the entire campaign
on a tooth-brush."
As a matter of fact, I have a sneaking admiration for the man who
dares to borrow. His really is the part of wisdom. But at times he
may lose himself in places where he can neither a borrower nor a
lender be, and there are men so tenderly constituted that they cannot
keep another man hungry while they use his coffee-pot. So it is well
to take a few things with you--if only to lend them to the men who
travel "light."
On hunting and campaigning trips the climate, the means of transport,
and the chance along the road of obtaining food and fodder vary so
greatly that it is not possible to map out an outfit which would
serve equally well for each of them. What on one journey was your
most precious possession on the next is a useless nuisance. On two
trips I have packed a tent weighing, with the stakes, fifty pounds,
which, as we slept in huts, I never once had occasion to open; while
on other trips in countries that promised to be more or less settled,
I had to always live under canvas, and sometimes broke camp twice a
day.
In one war, in which I worked for an English paper, we travelled like
major-generals. When that war started few thought it would last over
six weeks, and many of the officers regarded it in the light of a
picnic. In consequence, they mobilized as they never would have done
had they foreseen what was to come, and the mess contractor grew rich
furnishing, not only champagne, which in campaigns in fever countries
has saved the life of many a good man, but cases of even port and
burgundy, which never greatly helped any one. Later these mess
supplies were turned over to the field-hospitals, but at the start
every one travelled with more than he needed and more than the
regulations allowed, and each correspondent was advised that if he
represented a first-class paper and wished to "save his face" he had
better travel in state. Those who did not, found the staff and
censor less easy of access, and the means of obtaining information
more difficult. But it was a nuisance. If, when a man halted at
your tent, you could not stand him whiskey and sparklet soda,
Egyptian cigarettes, compressed soup, canned meats, and marmalade,
your paper was suspected of trying to do it "on the cheap," and not
only of being mean, but, as this was a popular war, unpatriotic.
When the army stripped down to work all this was discontinued, but at
the start I believe there were carried with that column as many tins
of tan-leather dressing as there were rifles. On that march my own
outfit was as unwieldy as a gypsy's caravan. It consisted of an
enormous cart, two oxen, three Basuto ponies, one Australian horse,
three servants, and four hundred pounds of supplies and baggage.
When it moved across the plain it looked as large as a Fall River
boat. Later, when I joined the opposing army, and was not expected
to maintain the dignity of a great London daily, I carried all my
belongings strapped to my back, or to the back of my one pony, and I
was quite as comfortable, clean, and content as I had been with the
private car and the circus tent.
Throughout the Greek war, as there were no horses to be had for love
or money, we walked, and I learned then that when one has to carry
his own kit the number of things he can do without is extraordinary.
While I marched with the army, offering my kingdom for a horse, I
carried my outfit in saddle-bags thrown over my shoulder. And I
think it must have been a good outfit, for I never bought anything to
add to it or threw anything away. I submit that as a fair test of a
kit.
Further on, should any reader care to know how for several months one
may keep going with an outfit he can pack in two saddle-bags, I will
give a list of the articles which in three campaigns I carried in
mine.
Personally, I am for travelling "light," but at the very start one is
confronted with the fact that what one man calls light to another
savors of luxury. I call fifty pounds light; in Japan we each were
allowed the officer's allowance of sixty-six pounds. Lord Wolseley,
in his "Pocketbook," cuts down the officer's kit to forty pounds,
while "Nessmut," of the Forest and Stream, claims that for a hunting
trip, all one wants does not weigh over twenty-six pounds. It is
very largely a question of compromise. You cannot eat your cake and
have it. You cannot, under a tropical sun, throw away your blanket
and when the night dew falls wrap it around you. And if, after a day
of hard climbing or riding, you want to drop into a folding chair, to
make room for it in your carry-all you must give up many other lesser
things.
By travelling light I do not mean any lighter than the necessity
demands. If there is transport at hand, a man is foolish not to
avail himself of it. He is always foolish if he does not make things
as easy for himself as possible. The tenderfoot will not agree with
this. With him there is no idea so fixed, and no idea so absurd, as
that to be comfortable is to be effeminate. He believes that
"roughing it" is synonymous with hardship, and in season and out of
season he plays the Spartan. Any man who suffers discomforts he can
avoid because he fears his comrades will think he cannot suffer
hardships is an idiot. You often hear it said of a man that "he can
rough it with the best of them." Any one can do that. The man I
want for a "bunkie" is the one who can be comfortable while the best
of them are roughing it. The old soldier knows that it is his duty
to keep himself fit, so that he can perform his work, whether his
work is scouting for forage or scouting for men, but you will often
hear the volunteer captain say: "Now, boys, don't forget we're
roughing it; and don't expect to be comfortable." As a rule, the
only reason his men are uncomfortable is because he does not know how
to make them otherwise; or because he thinks, on a campaign, to
endure unnecessary hardship is the mark of a soldier.
In the Cuban campaign the day the American forces landed at Siboney a
major-general of volunteers took up his head-quarters in the house
from which the Spanish commandant had just fled, and on the veranda
of which Caspar Whitney and myself had found two hammocks and made
ourselves at home. The Spaniard who had been left to guard the house
courteously offered the major-general his choice of three bed-rooms.
They all were on the first floor and opened upon the veranda, and to
the general's staff a tent could have been no easier of access.
Obviously, it was the duty of the general to keep himself in good
physical condition, to obtain as much sleep as possible, and to rest
his great brain and his limbs cramped with ten days on shipboard.
But in a tone of stern reproof he said, "No; I am campaigning now,
and I have given up all luxuries." And with that he stretched a
poncho on the hard boards of the veranda, where, while just a few
feet from him the three beds and white mosquito nets gleamed
invitingly, he tossed and turned. Besides being a silly spectacle,
the sight of an old gentleman lying wide awake on his shoulder-blades
was disturbing, and as the hours dragged on we repeatedly offered him
our hammocks. But he fretfully persisted in his determination to be
uncomfortable. And he was. The feelings of his unhappy staff,
several of whom were officers of the regular army, who had to follow
the example of their chief, were toward morning hardly loyal. Later,
at the very moment the army moved up to the battle of San Juan this
same major-general was relieved of his command on account of illness.
Had he sensibly taken care of himself, when the moment came when he
was needed, he would have been able to better serve his brigade and
his country. In contrast to this pose is the conduct of the veteran
hunter, or old soldier. When he gets into camp his first thought,
after he has cared for his horse, is for his own comfort. He does
not wolf down a cold supper and then spread his blanket wherever he
happens to be standing. He knows that, especially at night, it is
unfair to ask his stomach to digest cold rations. He knows that the
warmth of his body is needed to help him to sleep soundly, not to
fight chunks of canned meat. So, no matter how sleepy he may be, he
takes the time to build a fire and boil a cup of tea or coffee. Its
warmth aids digestion and saves his stomach from working overtime.
Nor will he act on the theory that he is "so tired he can sleep
anywhere." For a few hours the man who does that may sleep the sleep
of exhaustion. But before day breaks he will feel under him the
roots and stones, and when he awakes he is stiff, sore and
unrefreshed. Ten minutes spent in digging holes for hips and
shoulder-blades, in collecting grass and branches to spread beneath
his blanket, and leaves to stuff in his boots for a pillow, will give
him a whole night of comfort and start him well and fit on the next
day's tramp. If you have watched an old sergeant, one of the Indian
fighters, of which there are now too few left in the army, when he
goes into camp, you will see him build a bunk and possibly a shelter
of boughs just as though for the rest of his life he intended to
dwell in that particular spot. Down in the Garcia campaign along the
Rio Grande I said to one of them: "Why do you go to all that
trouble? We break camp at daybreak." He said: "Do we? Well, maybe
you know that, and maybe the captain knows that, but I don't know it.
And so long as I don't know it, I am going to be just as snug as
though I was halted here for a month." In camping, that was one of
my first and best lessons--to make your surroundings healthy and
comfortable. The temptation always is to say, "Oh, it is for only
one night, and I am too tired." The next day you say the same thing,
"We'll move to-morrow. What's the use?" But the fishing or shooting
around the camp proves good, or it comes on to storm, and for maybe a
week you do not move, and for a week you suffer discomforts. An hour
of work put in at the beginning would have turned it into a week of
ease.
When there is transport of even one pack-horse, one of the best helps
toward making camp quickly is a combination of panniers and bed used
for many years by E. F. Knight, the Times war correspondent, who lost
an arm at Gras Pan. It consists of two leather trunks, which by day
carry your belongings slung on either side of the pack-animal, and by
night act as uprights for your bed. The bed is made of canvas
stretched on two poles which rest on the two trunks. For travelling
in upper India this arrangement is used almost universally. Mr.
Knight obtained his during the Chitral campaign, and since then has
used it in every war. He had it with Kuroki's army during this last
campaign in Manchuria. {6}
A more compact form of valise and bed combined is the "carry-all," or
any of the many makes of sleeping-bags, which during the day carry
the kit and at night when spread upon the ground serve for a bed.
The one once most used by Englishmen was Lord Wolseley's "valise and
sleeping-bag." It was complicated by a number of strings, and
required as much lacing as a dozen pairs of boots. It has been
greatly improved by a new sleeping-bag with straps, and flaps that
tuck in at the ends. But the obvious disadvantage of all sleeping-
bags is that in rain and mud you are virtually lying on the hard
ground, at the mercy of tarantula and fever.
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