Then the example of the vigorous way in which history will at last
deal with those who fail when the pinch comes, tends to keep a man
up to his work and to make him avoid the rock on which so many have
split, the disposition to take refuge in doing nothing when he finds
it difficult to decide what should be done.
The first fortnight in camp was the hardest for the troops. The
ploughed fields became deep with mud, which nothing could remove but
the good weather which should allow them to pack hard under the
continued tramp of thousands of men. The organization of the camp
kitchens had to be learned by the hardest also, and the men in each
company who had some aptitude for cooking had to be found by a slow
process of natural selection, during which many an unpalatable meal
had to be eaten. A disagreeable bit of information came to us in the
proof that more than half the men had never had the contagious
diseases of infancy. The measles broke out, and we had to organize a
camp hospital at once. A large barn near by was taken for this
purpose, and the surgeons had their hands full of cases which,
however trivial they might seem at home, were here aggravated into
dangerous illness by the unwonted surroundings and the impossibility
of securing the needed protection from exposure.
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