Company K at the border — ‘We have arrived’

This is the latest in a series of posts about the deployment of National Guard Company K of Glens Falls during the Mexican border conflict of 1916.

On July 15, 1916, having settled into their new camp at Mission, Texas, about three miles from the Mexican border, members of Company K savored their “first real meal in eight days” — a supper “feast” of “fine meat, potatoes, sauce and other good things.”

“The only thing more welcome would be the words ‘Glens Falls’ by a train announcer,” the company’s “special correspondent” wrote in a dispatch to The Post-Star.

It had been a long trip from Camp Whitman in Dutchess County, where the Glens Falls guard unit had been in training since late April.

The men were content to be done traveling, so long as they weren’t going home for a while.

“The long journey is over. … It feels mighty fine to stretch out under a tent and rest without the rumble of a moving train,” the correspondent had written in a separate dispatch a day earlier.

Upon their arrival on July 14, the camp doctors prescribed each soldier a dose of “two bitter pills” to prevent malaria, swallowed down with a swig of foul-tasting water.

“The water here tastes much different from that of Glens Falls, but it has been tested and found to be pure, so we are drinking it freely.”

The men got their first glance at a cactus and adjusted to the 105 degree heat.

The correspondent predicted the coming months would be a good experience for the men from Glens Falls.

“This expedition to the border is going to be the best thing in the world for a great many of us and will harden us up. Some of our members were fat and flabby and needed to reduce, others were in dire need of exercise, others should have open air life. This is the ideal existence for good health.”

Sources: The Post-Star July 20,21, 1916.

Click here to read the most recent previous post in the series.