I made myself a promise to look up Wyatt and
Sadie if I ever got out to Los Angeles. It was a promise I
kept.
As it turned out, 1910 also was the year
that I reconnected with an old comrade from my days with the U.S.
Army in the Philippines.
I was sitting in my office at the
Record-Herald one day when my telephone rang. After
answering with the standard hello, I heard an unexpectedly familiar
voice on the other end of the line.
“Is this Captain Battles, the terror of
Caloocan and Malolos?”
“Who is this?” I asked.
“Why, don’t you know your old commanding
officer, you reprobate?”
It was Frederick “Fearless Freddie” Funston,
who was now a full-fledged U.S. Army brigadier general. Funston was
in Chicago with his wife, Eda, after serving two years as
commandant of the Army Ser
