Company C Found Little Glory, But Much Disease During War Service

After a declaration of war in April of 1898, American forces moved swiftly to defeat the Spanish Army and Navy. In so doing they found that the danger from the Spaniards was secondary and that the main enemy was disease.. As it turned out, New Albany's Company C didn't get a chance to fire a shot at a Spaniard but it had plenty of experience fighting typhoid fever and miscellaneous camp diseases.... [Company C and other elements of the 159th Regiment (formerly the 1st) Indiana Infantry...Two New Albany troopers--William Payne and John Watson--were wounded in the fighting before Santiago de Cuba...One of the sick with typhoid fever was Jess L. Spence...The war news on the homefront was overshadowed by a story of the search for thieves who stole the famous shipyard bell from the C. Hegewald Machine Co. The bell, weighing 390 pounds and cast in New Albany in 1847 by Benjamin Lemon, disappeared without trace from the Hegewald property...]