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From Manila. Mr. and Mrs. Zack Gilkey have re ceived a letter[from their son Charles, of the 4th United States infantry. It is,as follows: “MANILA, P. I., April 12, 1899,—My Dear Father and Mother and all the Home Folks:—I will now try to write you a letter while we are,resting for a week. So far my impressions of the island are very limited for I have not seen very much of it, and then I had no time to stop and admire scenery, for if I had it is very likely some wan dering Filipino would have taken a shot at me. But take the island as it is I think the place is very healthy. We have lost one man out of our com pany since we landed and he died one week after we landed. He was sick all the way over, I will tell you it was an awfully long trip to this place. We were 53 days on wait. The pret tiest place It saw on the trip was at Colombo on the island of Ceylon, I have seen many a queer sight since I left home. The most heathenish set of people I ever saw was in coming through the Suez canal, which is about As wide again 48 Ajwagon road in In diana. The natives would run alone the side of the canal looking at us like we were A circus or something won derful. They did not have a stitch of clothing on and this was rare as there were the officers’ wives and daughters on the boat. The native Filipino you might think were such sort of people too, but they are not. The men have straight black hair cut pompadour and seem to me to be a very intelligent looking set of fellows. The women are pretty and none of them are very large. Then swe have the Chinese here, who always carry a bamboo rod on their shoulders with a basket on eacooned. About all the native ani mals there are cats, dogs and a kind of water buffalo, which are used for horses. All the horses here are shipped from China and are not much larger than a Texans pony. There have been two hard battless fought since we landed. ‘The Filipinos, under Monte negro, a Filipino leader next to Aguin aldo, numbered 10,000, while we num bered some 4,000 to 6,000. We were not right on the firing line but once in this battle, for we were held in the reserve, but, oh my! how the bullets did fly around us. There were two Chinamen hit in our camp by Filipino bullets. The rifts most in use among the insurgents are the Mauser and the Remington. The latter is the most deadly weapon, for it shoots a brass ball, which if it hits is certain death or the loss of a limb follows. There is at this time only about one rifle to every five men in the insurgent army. We will move on the lines again to night and relieve the second Oregon volunteers. As 1500n as we get settled in barracks,and everything is quiet I will send something nice to sister Gertie. I could send her a nice silk dress for almost nothing. Everybody smokes cigarettes here, men, women and children. There is a large Chi nese cemetery right close to where we are now camped and they are having three or four funerals everyday. ‘The last thingy they do is to hold a feast over the grave of the deceased. Jim Rush and Floyd Mitchell are both well and sends their regards to you and their love for their friends at home. Jim had the measles awhile back and was in the hospital a couple of week, but is all right now. They were both sea sick any the way over here. There is a kind of wine here called ‘‘beno,” which if you drink very much of you get to that stage where you would fight your own grandmother. Well, sometimes the boys get to drinking beno and you can imagine the scene in camp. They are just simply wild. April 13—I did not get to finish this last night on account of going on pick et duty just after supper. There are all kinds of fruit growing here, ban nas, oranges, figs and the bread fruit. The trees here are a hard kind of wood, something similar to mahogany. Bam boos grow by the million here, and all the small bushes have thorns on them which make it almost impossible to get through them. Speaking of the health of the boys in general it is exception ally good, and for myself my health is simply immense. I have not been sick a minute since we left the states. I weigh 203 pounds and am getting fleshier every day. I forgot to tell you that it is very warm here and mos quitoes are bad. Tell Audley if he ever enlists in the army not to enlist for foreign service, for it is too far from home, from every body and every thing. Tell the boys around home that I would like to hear from them but I am so busy now I cannot hardly find time to write you folks. Yours affectionately, CHARLES T, GILKEY,
Newspaper Details
Crawfordsville Weekly Journal
Crawfordsville, Indiana, US
Fri, May 26, 1899
Page 2
Full Page
Clipped by
Anonymous
IL, USA 16 Feb 2026
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