PORT TREVORTON, PENNSYLVANIA

February 20, 1920

"THIS IS WHAT I REMEMBER OF MY VOLUNTEER MILITIA SERVICE"

We started out to form a Company. We got together some 20 men. I have forgotten the exact number. Then we spliced with a number of young fellows from Selinsgrove. That formed Company D of the 18^th Regiment then stationed at Harrisburg. Elected A.C. Simpson as Captain, Jerry Bogar as Quartermaster, McClay Coldren as 1^st Sergeant and different others to less important posts. We got to Harrisburg and they marched us up to Camp Curtin. Stood around awhile and then we were told to get into rank. Started to Pennsylvania Depot where we got our first meal, which consisted of a piece of dry bread and cold ham and a tin of good coffee. Then we marched to the Capitol Yard, later into the Capitol Building. We went to the second floor to rest till morning. We did not sleep much as the boys were singing and dancing just as if they were at some great frolic. But it was the boys’ time and they preferred dancing to sleep before they returned home. Wonder what it would have been like had they stayed longer.

We surely were a mooly crowd, dressed in style, all in their nearly best. I has a braided cloth coat, satin vest, big black silk neck tie, graded calf boots and the rest were dressed equally as good and some much better. Our clothes were considerably soiled when we came home. We were in such bad array that most of us spent our first Sunday indoors or until we could replenish our wardrobe. We boys were lucky if we had more than one suit and a pair of overalls and a checkered shirt.

Our army equipment consisted of a Harpers Ferry musket with bayonet, haversack made of cloth, and a canteen. We had to carry our ammunition in our haversack. However, the ladies of Selinsgrove presented every man in Co. D with an oilcloth haversack. I brought mine home with me and had it until my father wore it out with his knitting tools used to make fish nets.

Nearly every boy, I'll call them all boys, although there were some men, carried a wreath that his sister, or sweetheart or mother gave him. On our way to Harrisburg going around the turn at Liverpool Station I was riding on the platform, leaning way out and talking to a boy in car 3. There was some cordwood piled along the track and a man pulled me in just in time to miss the woodpile, but it caught my wreath and it too saved my life.

Left Harrisburg by train next morning up Cumberland Valley. When we got to near Green Castle the railroad was blocked with trains. Then they had some trouble with a regiment that did not want to serve. Their colonel disembarked them and had them fall in formation to cross the state line. They said that they had only enlisted for state duty. Then he gave the command - every damn coward step in front, then I will go with the rest. There was not a man had the courage to step out, so he gave the command to return to the cars. He was a Dutch colonel and with this example there was no trouble with the other regiments.