Page:Van Cise exhibits to the Commision on Industrial Relations regarding Colorado coal miner's strike.djvu/7

Rh workmen alike. But on the morning of the Ludlow conflict the idea of battle was furthest from the minds of the few remaining troopers.

Had such at attack been planned by the military, the soldiers would have occupied the commanding positions and delivered it at dawn instead of allowing those places to be occupied by the strikers with such force that it took all day to drive the colonists from them. Instead of any such warlike preparations, we find that on Monday morning at the very time the battle began Maj. Hamrock, in command, had with him in the tents facing the colony but three men, one of whom was a cripple.

The entire force of soldiers in the vicinity numbered 34, of whom 12 occupied the tents in view of the colony and 22 were stationed at Cedar Hill, in the mouth of Berwind Canyon. The rest of Maj. Hamrock's dozen were watering their horses or attending to their routine camp duty at some distance from the tents when the fire commenced.

At the station at Cedar Hill there were present the wives of three of the officers, the wives and children of several of the enlisted men, with civilian visitors and their wives, all of whom had spent Sunday with their relatives. One of the women was shortly to give birth to a baby. With all of these women and children at the entrance to the canyon, and with the certainty that the defeat of the soldiers meant the invasion of their camps and the villages beyond, it is folly to believe that at such a moment the battle was deliberately brought about by the troops.

The other unequivocal fact that we find is that the battle was unexpectedly precipitated on Monday and that its coming was not known at all to the soldiers nor to a greater portion of the tent colony. It had been planned by the Greeks for Sunday. It was planned by them for Tuesday, but the spark that kindled the fires of war fell without warning on Monday morning.

Lieut. Linderfelt, who happened to be visiting his brother at Cedar Hill on Sunday, and whose return to Trinidad with his wife was for some reason delayed until Monday morning, received a letter from some foreign woman, claiming that her husband was being detained against his will in the tent colony. This letter was sent to Maj. Hamrock at the tents near the colony.

A few soldiers were detailed to meet every train to see that the passengers getting on or off were not molested by the colonists. By this train detail Maj. Hamrock sent word to the Greek leader, Louis Tikas, who was also chief man of the colony, calling attention to the letter and demanding the release of the writer's husband. Tikas denied that any such man was in the colony.

The men of the train detail answered that they were sure he was, and that if not delivered they would come back in force and get him.

These men of course had no authority for any such statement, but it was in line with the ill feeling that we have described as existing between these particular men and the colonists.

The train detail reported the answer of Tikas to the major, who then called Tikas over the telephone and asked him to come to the military camp, as he had done a hundred times before, to talk it over. The reply was most unusual. For the first time Tikas flatly refused to come to the major's camp.

Thereupon, the major telephoned to the station at Cedar Hill and told the captain in charge that he might have need of him and his men to search the colony for a man "held a prisoner there. The Cedar Hill detachment was ordered to drill on the parade ground at Water Tank Hill.

Referring again to our simile of the capital letter K it will be remembered that the Cedar Hill station is at the extremity of the upper arm of the letter, and Water Tank Hill is at the top of the vertical shaft, the colony and Maj. Hamrock's tents facing each other where the lines join. It should be added that Cedar Hill is invisible from the tents of the colony, being up the canyon a way, but Water Tank Hill is in plain view of the strikers' tents.

A part, not all, of the men from Cedar Hill saddled their horses and proceeded to Water Tank Hill. In the meantime Tikas telephoned to the major that he would meet him at the railroad station, which is about equidistant from the two sets of tents. After this conversation, Maj. Hamrock telephoned again to Cedar Hill and directed the remaining soldiers to join their troops on the parade grounds, and to bring with them the machine gun.

We find that after the train detail left, Tikas was surrounded by his Greeks in the colony and that these Greeks were under the impression that the colony was about to be again searched for arms—a thing which they had vowed they would never again permit. The Greeks were vociferous and insistent upon giving battle to the soldiers at once if they should appear, Tikas