The Little War of Private Post: The Spanish-American War Seen Up Close

Charles Johnson Post (18731956) received not one but two handmade red flannel bellybands for protection against tropical fevers when he enlisted as a private in 1898 with the 71st New York Infantry. He was paid a monthly wage of $13.00, with an additional $1.30 combat pay per month. Setting off for what he later termed the little wars that are the mere trivia of history, he came back to write a mild chronicle of many little men who were painting on a big canvas, and of their little epic routines of life, with a common death at their elbow. It is only the little, but keen, tribulations that made the epic routine of an old-fashioned war.