Note 46 — Chapter XI · Otis and the War

As to the charge of suppressing the real condition of our sick in the hospitals, Mr. Collins says that General Otis remarked that the “hospitals were full of perfectly well men who were shirking and should be turned out.” On June 2, 1899, according to General Otis’s report (p. 121), sixty per cent. of one of the State volunteer regiments were in hospital sick or wounded and there were in its ranks an average of but eight men to a company fit for duty. The report of the regimental surgeon stating this was forwarded by General Otis to Washington with the comment that there were few cases of serious illness; that the then “present station of these troops”—the place where the fighting was hottest, San Fernando—“is considered by the Filipinos as a health resort,” and that “when orders to take passage to the United States are issued, both the Montana and South Dakota troops will recover with astonishing rapidity.”46