Souvenir. A Rabid Rookie's Rhymes. The Experiences, Opinions and Imaginations of a Nebraska Rookie on the Mexican Border [wrapper title]

[N.p., possibly Brownsville, Tx, 1916. Very good.. [1],11pp. Original tan printed wrappers, stapled. Wrappers soiled, partially split along spine, penciled ownership signature on front cover. Light creasing, occasional minor foxing to text. An unrecorded collection of poetry by First Sergeant Merritt H. Fuson of the 5th Nebraska Infantry, capturing military life during the U.S.-Mexico Border War in 1916-1917. Sergeant Fuson's poems begin with "A Rookie's Prayer" and generally describe the incessant drilling and preparations for battle in southern Texas. One of the poems was given to Fuson before he left home and one other poem is credited to a "Minnesota artilleryman, name unknown," but the remainder of the poems appear to be authored by Fuson himself. Fuson's poem "War Is Hell" particularly encapsulates the difficulties of military camp life during his service, but does not capture the horrors of war which Fuson apparently never experienced. Fuson does express his desire to return home to Nebraska in at least two poems, and his homesickness comes through in others in passages such as "Sing a song of Texas, Drill and sweat and dig, One Nebraska soldier, Dirty as a pig." The 5th Nebraska Infantry had a short and uneventful stay in Llano Grande outside Mercedes in the McAllen-Brownsville region of south Texas. They arrived in July 1916 and drilled and camped until returning to Nebraska in February 1917. An interesting collection of wartime poetry by a young Nebraska man serving in the Texas-Mexico borderlands. No copies in OCLC, auction records, or any other sources we consulted.