Fin de siècle Vets

  Douglas MacArthur’s bromide notwithstanding, old soldiers do die, and a good number of them come to Florida before they do. One good thing to come out of that is a substantial and apparently unique collection found on the shelves at the Library of Florida History relating to some largely forgotten American military exploits.

  America has had so many military exploits we have forgotten not only the exploits, but the names of organizations of veterans formed to preserve the memory of those exploits. Specifically in this case, consider the “United Spanish War Veterans.”

  From their organizational meeting in 1904 to the passing of the last member in 1992, the USWV represented those who served between April, 1898, the start of the Spanish-American War and July, 1902, the official end of the Philippine-American War (usually known to Americans as the Philippine Insurrection). This includes a short, bitter conflict from June to September, 1901 when the U.S. and seven other nations teamed up for what they called “The Chinese Relief Expedition.” We mainly remember it as “The Boxer Rebellion”.

  For the first two decades of the 20th century, the USWV was the leading veteran’s group in the nation, taking over the lead from the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) and United Confederates Veterans (UCV) as the Civil War survivors began to die off.  The USWV continued the struggle for veteran’s rights, benefits and pensions, and to honor and remember the service of the vets. They lobbied congress to fund statues and memorials around the country

such as this one in Pompton Lakes, N.J. commemorating the U.S.S. Maine and displaying a damaged air funnel from the ship.  In the 1920s they even secured a U.S.S. Maine memorial in Havana, Cuba.

  The library collection includes the only known complete nationwide collection of the USWV’s proceedings manuals, basically the minutes of their meetings.

  As they organized they formed Departments. Each state was a Department (Florida was formed in 1911 - http://sites.rootsweb.com/~scjssawv/History/Florida/USWV_DeptofFla.html ), and within each state they formed local Camps. There would be meetings at those levels at regular intervals and once a year there would be a National Encampment in different cities around the country.

  Flags like this one from the Department of Minnesota would fly over every Department meeting and over the Department’s area at the National Encampments. Few survive.

  You can get a better idea of the flag’s size from this view, taken as it posed for its portrait in the Library of Florida History’s main hall.

  The collection goes beyond proceedings manuals from meetings, just as the organization’s raison d’être went beyond building monuments and advocating for pensions. These young men had shared a life-changing experience, bonding through fear and loss in some cases, at least over shared adventures. Naturally, there was a comfort in gathering with buddies who valued the same history.

  The collection includes diaries, memoirs and scrapbooks, like the one under the cross in the image above.

That book contains every newspaper article about the war from 1898 to early 1899 as collected by a Jacksonville vet.

    There is equipment that reminds us how rudimentary military life could be; a back pack to carry your pup tent. The folded canvas ground cloth is about a half inch thick and feels like leather

 

  The back pack is designed to keep from falling off your back, and that’s it. You didn’t need padding; a few miles lugging this baby and your shoulders would be numb.

  And then there are the personal items that give a glimpse of an individual from Michigan who went with the 34th Volunteer Infantry to war in Cuba and lived to tell about it.

 

  Two cotton items indexed as pants and shirt but which feel and look more like pajamas. The pants have a 28 inch waist.

   You may not associate blue striped pajamas with a soldier’s uniform, but leggings with a strap to go under a shoe or boot certainly pass muster. A kit bag brings new meaning to the idea of traveling light. The lace-up leggings of course look like they are from the prop department of any WWI movie ever made, instead of the other way around.

  And then there are the weapons.

  Two serious knives

 with good sized blades that look capable of doing serious damage, and that look as if they have seen hard use.

  They might have over their lifetimes, but they do not appear to be standard issue army knives and they did not see serious combat use during the time 34th was in Cuba (http://www.spanamwar.com/34mich.htm). This is not to say the 34th did not suffer losses, but their real enemy appeared to be disease. Something we can all relate to at the moment.

  As time took its inevitable toll on the USWV membership the group performed one last service, represented by this graves registration book from an Oklahoma unit. When a vet died the organization would provide a stone marker, and if needed, it would even pay for the burial and upkeep of the grave site. This service continued through the early 1960s. As units shut down, their records would be passed to remaining units, and eventually on to the final survivors. Many of them would relocate to Florida, as did the last entry on this page, and in fact the last active units were in the state. 

 That is what brought this material, ultimately, to the archives of the Library of Florida History. You can see the passing of the leadership in this 1989 publication.

Old soldiers may die, but they need not be forgotten.  Today, their descendants make sure they are not: http://sites.rootsweb.com/~scjssawv/History/History.html