Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 201, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 August 1916 — TELLS OF GREAT TEXAS HURRICANE [ARTICLE]

TELLS OF GREAT TEXAS HURRICANE

Indiana Soldiers Struck By Tail End of Texas Storm—Much Damage Done. Mercedes, Texas, August 20.—The author of the atrocity that it never rains in Texas is an unmitigated falsifier and the truth is not in him. The Indiana troops have been in Texas forty-two days and for thirty-eight of those days the rain fell on them. In addition to the rainstorms, the Hoosters have been lashed by the tail of a hurricane that is a part of Texas life, and it will be good news to the home folk to know that none of the Indiana soldiers got even so much as a scratch. In the forty-two days the Indiana troops have been here they have passed through all the vicissitudes of war except being sick on an army transport or engaged .in an actual battle. They have sweltered in railroad cars and been in railroad wrecks; they have dodged murderous rattlesnakes and have been stung by hideous scorpions; they have chopped down trees and put up buildings; they have fought mosquitoes and gnats, and been bitten by spiders; they have dug ditches and built roads; they have crushed tarantulas and they have swatted flies; they have dared typhoid, malaria, typhus and smallpox, and they have enjoyed the pleasures of dengue fever; they have slept on the damp ground, slumbered on army cots and tossed in army hospitals; they have crunched hard tack and dined on cold boiled potatoes. They have marched in the mud and drilled under the fierceness of a tropical sun; they have been tired and hungry and thirsty; they have been tired and homesick; they have been speared by cactuses and stabbed by Spanish bayonets; they have been kicked by the army mule and ditched by the army truck, and the same spirit that actuated them at Fort Harrison prevails with the great majority of them now. But they never saw such a sudden change from tranquility to tumult as they found in that Texas hurricane. Atmospheric conditions unlike anything they ever experienced prevailed on the morning of the storm. The sky was dark gray, with here and there patches of muddy black and filled with somber clouds tinged with yellow as if reflecting a conflagration.

These clouds floated about on a gentle wind from the northwest in the direction of the gulf and not from the gulf, as one naturally would imagine. The air was cool and pleasant and there seemed to be nothing the matter with the morning except a little sprinkle of rain that must be regarded as part of a perfect day in this part of Texas. A sudden chill appeared to strike the camp and the wind began wailing among the mesquite while the flowers and plants bent to the breeze. The wail became a shriek and the plants bowed to the ground and the clouds idling about the heavens dashed together in one black moss and the water came tumbling down as if from the rip by a great knife. All previous showers that have fallen on the Indiana troops were as sprinkles and all previous winds were gentle zephyrs. There was no thunder, no lightning, but just a hurrying, scurrying mass of clouds riding a gale and emptying an ocean of water on the camp. From across the railroad was heard the weird note of a bugle sounding the artillery recall and through the slanting sheets of water came Battery A, of Indianapolis, mounted on their horses, soldiers every one of them and unmindful of the whistling wind and the flood. They seemed to be a Frederic Remington picture stepped from the canvas into real life. About the camp guy ropes were hauled taut and weights added, tent curtains were dropped and anchored. There was no panic, no excitement, and the line between officer and man had been oblitered by the tempest. The mules, from long experience in the army, stood apart and faced the wind —there is nothing on earth that can beat an army mule sizing up the right situation.

All day, from nine in the morning until after nine at night, the wind bowled along from forty to sixty miles an hour and the rain fell in torrents. The tornado smashed in the windows and tore the shutters from the office of the camp quarters. It tore down a windmill about seventy-five feet from the headquarters of General Lewis, just barely missing crushing two soldiers that were buffeting the elements. * n Trees were lifted out of the ground and many tents were flattened and a few blown across the camp. The bedding and clothing of the soldiers were soaked with water. You have seen the dust' flying through a street on a