Part 16 (1/2)

At the camp were three colored chaplains and one colored surgeon, serving with the Regular Army, and their presence was of great value in the way of accustoming the people at large to beholding colored men as commissioned officers. To none were more attention shown than to these colored men, and there was apparently no desire to infringe upon their rights. Occasionally a very petty social movement might be made by an insignificant, with a view of humiliating a Negro chaplain, but such efforts usually died without harm to those aimed at and apparently without special comfort to those who engineered them.

The following paragraphs, written while in camp at the time indicated in them, may serve a good purpose by their insertion here, showing as they do the reflections of the writer as well as in outlining the more important facts a.s.sociated with that remarkable encampment:

CAMP WIKOFF AND ITS LESSONS.

Now that the days of this camp are drawing to a close it is profitable to recall its unique history and gather up some of the lessons it has taught us. Despite all the sensationalism, investigations, testings, experimentation, and general condemnation, the camp at Montauk accomplished what was intended, and was itself a humane and patriotic establishment. It is not for me to say whether a better site might not have been selected, or whether the camp might not have been better managed. I will take it for granted that improvement might have been made in both respects, but our concern is rather with what was, than with what ”might have been.”

To appreciate Camp Wikoff we must consider two things specially; first, its purpose, and secondly, the short time allowed to prepare it; and then go over the whole subject and properly estimate its extent and the amount of labor involved.

The intention of the camp was to afford a place where our troops, returning from Cuba, prostrated with climatic fever, and probably infected with yellow fever, might receive proper medical treatment and care, until the diseases were subdued. The site was selected with this in view, and the conditions were admirably suited to such a purpose.

Completely isolated, on dry soil, with dry pure air, cool climate, away from mosquitoes, the camp seemed all that was desired for a great field hospital.

Here the sick could come and receive the best that nature had to bestow in the way of respite from the heat, and pure ocean breezes, and, taken altogether, the experiences of August and a good part of September, have justified the selection of Montauk. While prostrations were occurring elsewhere, the camp was cool and delightful most of the time.

As to the preparations, it must be remembered that the recall of the whole Army of Invasion from Cuba was made in response to a popular demand, and as a measure of humanity. Bring the army home! was the call, and, Bring it at once!

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Such urgency naturally leaps ahead of minor preparations. The soldiers wanted to come; the people wanted them to come; hence the crowding of transports and the lack of comforts on the voyages; hence the lack of hospital accommodations when the troops began to arrive. Haste almost always brings about such things; but sometimes haste is imperative.

This was the case in getting the army out of Cuba and into Camp at Montauk in August, '98. Haste was pushed to that point when omissions had to occur, and inconvenience and suffering resulted.

We must also remember the condition of the men who came to Montauk.

About 4,000 were reported as sick before they left Cuba; but, roughly speaking, there were 10,000 sick men landing in Montauk. Those who were cla.s.sed as well were, with rare exceptions, both mentally and physically incapable of high effort. It was an invalid army, with nearly one-half of its number seriously sick and suffering.

Ten thousand sick soldiers were never on our hands before, and the mighty problem was not realized until the transports began to emit their streams of weakness and walking death at Montauk. The preparation was altogether inadequate for such a ma.s.s of misery, and for a time all appeared confusion.

Then came severe, cruel, merciless criticisms; deserved in some cases no doubt, but certainly not everywhere. The faults, gaps, failures, were everywhere to be seen, and it was easy to see and to say what ought to have been done. But the situation at Camp Wikoff from August 15th to Sep. 15th needed more than censure; it needed help. The men who were working for the Government in both the medical and commissary departments needed a.s.sistance; the former in the way of nurses, and the latter in the way of appropriate food. The censure and exposure indulged in by the press may have contributed to direct the attention of the benevolently disposed to the conditions in the camp.

Then came the era of ample help; from Ma.s.sachusetts; from New York, in a word, from all over the country. The Merchants' Relief a.s.sociation poured in its thousands of dollars worth of supplies, bringing them to the camp and distributing them generously and wisely. The Women's Patriotic Relief, the Women's War Relief, the International Brotherhood League, and the powerful Red Cross Society, all poured in food and comforts for the sick thousands. Besides these great organizations there were also the spontaneous offerings of the people, many of them generously distributed by the Brooklyn Daily Eagle's active representatives. The tent of that journal was an excellent way-mark and a veritable house of the good shepherd for many a lost wanderer, as well as a place of comfort, cheer and rest. The work done was very valuable and highly appreciated.

To the medical department came the trained hand of the female nurse.

No one who saw these calm-faced, white-hooded sisters, or the cheery cheeked, white capped nurses from the schools, could fail to see that they were in the right place. The sick soldier's lot was brightened greatly when the gentle female nurse came to his cot. Woman can never be robbed of her right to nurse. This is one of the lessons taught by the Hispano-American War.

This vast army has been handled. No yellow fever has been spread. The general health has been restored. The disabled are mostly housed in hospitals, and many of them are on the road to recovery. Some have died; some are on furlough, and many have gone to their homes.

The regulars are repairing to their stations quite invigorated, and greatly helped in many ways by the kind treatment they have received.

Camp Wikoff was not a failure; but a great and successful object lesson, as well as a great summer school in nationalism. Here black, white and Indian soldiers fraternized; here Northerners and Southerners served under the same orders. Ten thousand soldiers and as many civilians daily attended the best school of its kind ever held in this country, striving to take home to their hearts the lessons that G.o.d is teaching the nations.

The Rev. Sylvester Malone thus sums up the message of the war to us in his letter to the committee to welcome Brooklyn's soldiers:

”This short war has done so much for America at home and abroad that we must take every soldier to our warmest affection and send him back to peaceful pursuits on the conviction that there is nothing higher in our American life than to have the privilege to cheer and gladden the marine and the soldier that have left to America her brightest and best page of a great history. This past war must kindle in our souls a love of all the brethren, black as well as white, Catholic as well as Protestant, having but one language, one nationality, and it is to be hoped, yet one religion.”

These are true words, as full of patriotism as they are of fraternity, and these are the two special lessons taught at Montauk--a broad, earnest, practical fraternity, and a love of country before which the petty prejudices of race and section were compelled to yield ground.

THE YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN a.s.sOCIATION IN CAMP WIKOFF.