Powder River, Let ‘er Buck
I’ve always liked to read and think about history and just borrowed a copy of a Theodore Roosevelt biography - Theodore Rex - by Edmund Morris. Those first few pages really pull at me to keep reading, and I’ll be spending a lot of time with it. Sometimes the measure of a man can be glorified through a clever, propagandistic style of writing, but I believe Roosevelt’s public life is well-documented enough that Morris didn’t get away with anything less than a truthful, objective assessment.
Another little history project of mine deals with a group of men who fought in the first world war. The 91st infantry division had as its battle cry or slogan, "Powder River, let ‘er buck." Most of the men in that division were from western states, some from Wyoming where the Powder River flows. The saying originated with some cowboys who were celebrating something in a drunken revelry. When I made that connection I started thinking there’s a good piece of poetry to be written regarding it, especially since my Grandpa Andrew Sandvig marched and fought in France with that outfit in the Meuse-Argonne offensive of 1918.
Grandpa carried a small New Testament with him (olive drab cover, probably government issue), and in it he made diary notations up to and including the wound he received. Unfortunately, the pencil notations are fading, but they have spoken volumes to me across these eighty-nine years. History texts further expand on the battle, and I’m in the process of reading all I can about it. It’s a small bit of history I plan to preserve.
