y the time the
regiment reached the camping side of the river and guards had to be put
on duty at once. Our blankets were piled up for no further service while
we were out on this expedition; the men, wet and muddy, had to pass the
night the best they could. There were supposed to be from 3,000 to 4,000
Filipinos near by and our night camp was a hazardous one. Everything
must be done with the utmost caution.

The men, wet and muddy, fought mosquitoes all night and had no rest. The
Filipinos could be heard all night busily tearing up the railroad track
and destroying a bridge a few hundred yards from us. They dug pits in
the ground and built fires in them, over which the track rails were
placed till hot enough to easily bend. Bending the rails, they thought,
prevented the Americans from using them again in shipping supplies over
the road. The site of our camp was a low, mucky place on the river bank,
where mosquitoes literally filled the air.

That was the hardest night on me of all the nights of two years' service
in the Philippine Islands. I was so sleepy and tired next morning that I
could scarcely hold up my head, and my condition seemed to be no worse
than that of every other soldier in the regiment. Mosquitoes had bitten
me through my trousers and brought blood. Frequently I have been
sleeping after a hard day's service when the mosquitoes would bite my
face and the blood run out and dry up in hard drops. When I could not
get water to wash off these places I would scratch them off. In some
cases these bites were poisonous. I have seen soldiers with large sores,
caused by scratching mosquito bites. I was cautious about poisoning
during my service in the Philippines.

The morning of the 26th, about four o'clock, I saw from my post, where
I had been all night, a big fire in the direction of Malabon. The
Filipinos had fired the town and left it. It was our purpose to capture
the place and take some forts on the river, but the tricky Filipinos
preferred burning their town to surrendering it to the hated Americans.

Our forces took up the advance on the enemy, who stubbornly resisted us
from ten o'clock in the morning until four in the evening, when they
retired to Malinto and took another stand behind a stone wall and held
this position until driven from it by a charge. We had to advance up a
long slope of open ground for one and a half miles. Firing was kept up
rapidly all the way. The enemy was driven out and the t