From Bismarck Tribune, February 10, 2010

Author John Durand started this book based on diaries kept by his grandfather, Tom Stafne, and a fellow volunteer,  John Kinne. Stafne used his diary to write a narrative he entitled “A Short History of My Personal Experience in the Volunteer Army of the United States during the War with Spain.”

“The Boys” is the result of the author's very successful and well-researched work in transcribing and footnoting his grandfather's short history to make it more understandable to younger family members.

The focus of this book is the 1st North Dakota Volunteers, 685 volunteers from all across North Dakota (plus some from Minnesota) who assembled at Fargo in May 1898, in response to President William McKinley's call on April 23, 1989, for 125,000 volunteers to fight the Spanish in Cuba, following the sinking of the USS Maine in Havana harbor on Feb. 15, 1898.

The 1st North Dakota Volunteers were organized into two battalions. The 1st Battalion consisted of Company A - Bismarck, Company B - Fargo, Company G - Valley City and Company H - Jamestown.  The 2nd Battalion consisted of Company C - Grafton, Company D - Devils lake, Company I - Wahpeton and Company K - Dickinson.

The author notes that in 1898 North Dakota’s population was about 300,000, and was mostly rural, with Bismarck, Fargo and Grand Forks having a combined population of less than 35,000.

Although the call for volunteers was to fight the Spanish in Cuba, they wound up fighting not the Spanish, but Filipinos seeking self-government and freedom from Spain.

Having easily crushed the Spanish, the United States decided to colonize the Philippines without consulting the Filipino people. The 1st North Dakota Volunteers were in the vanguard of that effort, which for more than four years cost 7,000-plus American lives as well as the lives of an estimated 16,000 to 20,000 Filipinos.

After 39 days on board a cramped troop transport, the 1st North Dakota Volunteers arrived in the Philippines on July 31, 1898. Even though Admiral George Dewey's ships had destroyed the Spanish naval squadron in Manila Bay on May 1, 1898, it wasn't until August 13, 1989, that Manila was seized by U.S. units, including the 1st North Dakota Volunteers. The 1st North Dakota Volunteers served in the Philippines for one year, leaving Manila Bay on July 31, 1899.

For those of us who enjoy military history, “The Boys” is an excellent company/squad level view of their year at war with the Filipino insurgents. The author's use of the diaries of two of the volunteers, supplemented by the observations of other volunteers, gives you a real sense of their experiences and the conditions under which they fought many small actions and several major campaigns. Nine of the volunteers were awarded the Medal of Honor.

For those of us who served during the Vietnam War, it is all eerily familiar. And today, as we watch our Guard and Reserve units deploy for a year in Iraq or Afghanistan, “The Boys” will make us realize other North Dakotans before us have answered the call to service in wars and conflicts.

Particularly enjoyable and interesting aspects of “The Boys” are the chapters on their homecoming and what happened to some of the volunteers later in life.

The detailed appendices include a list the volunteers with their rank, company, hometown and occupation; the organization of the battalions; photos of two companies; personnel statistics; a record of actions; and brief descriptions of some of the volunteers in “Young's Scouts.”

(Robert O. Wefald is a North Dakota State District Court Judge in Bismarck, serving the 12 counties of the South Central Judicial District. He will retire when his term ends on Dec. 31, 2010.  Wefald served on active duty as a Naval officer from 1964 to 1967 followed by 24 years in the Naval Reserve retiring in 1991.)