Welcome to Lt. Aleksander Krolikowski

[rehartwig]

Gentlemen of the Army of the Tennessee,

It is my great privelge to presents Lieutenant Aleksander Krolikowski, new commander of 2nd Infantry Brigade, Second Infantry Division, XV Corps, Army of the Tennessee.

The first round is on me! Gentlemen, please gather around and welcome Lt. Krolikowski!

[Joe Meyer]

I am informed that Aleksander is a former playtestor for HPS, and that he demonstrated his good judgement by specifically requesting field assignment with the Army of the Tennessee! This, of course, rates him two celebratory drinks from me! I see that some of the boys are preparing a barbque pit out back of the tavern, getting ready to cook us up some fine beef and pork!

I am reminded of the time I came out to the UMA from California in 1845. There were no railroads then, and I made the trip across the Sierras and Rockies by horse, a great adventure in that day, one fraught with peril along much of the route. Of most concern to me were the wide, desolate flatlands and badlands that reside principally between the two great mountain ranges. These lands were generally devoid of ready water and horribly dusty and dry. The so-called Digger Indians inhabited some of this area, and were expert stealers of all manner of things, causing the party of five with which I travelled to keep a constant guard throughout the nights and a wary eye during the day. After a while, everything we had, including ourselves became covered with the alkaline dust, effectively blending us right into the landscape so that even the diggers had trouble seeing us if we were not moving!

On one particuarly dusty day our fagged party stopped for a long rest in the shade of some large, rock outcroppings. So fatigued were we that not even the horses moved an inch after we had alighted upon the ground and found relatively comfortable spots to escape the suns rays. We remained in almost total stillness for the better part of a half hour, barely breathing in the stifling heat, everything but our eyes covered in layers of the region's tan-gray dust. Sometime later, in our nearly paralyzed state, we were quite surprised to see one of these digger Indians, perhaps middle-aged yet extremely spry, leaping down from rock to rock, right into our midst, evidently intent upon finding a comfortable place of his own to take his own motionless rest! So totally oblivious to our presence was he, due to our powdery camoflauge, that he took seat not more than 4 feet from Manuel Ortega, our storied guide and experienced frontiersman.

Not one given to unnecessarily quick reactions, Ortega took his time in carefully and slowly looking the Indian over. Then he spoke in a barely audible whisper, the common Spanish greeting, "Hola!" Well, that digger jump about 8 feet off the ground and lit out so fast that he left his britches on the ground! That's right, Ortega, literally scared that Indian's pants right off him! Nothing but a slowly settling dust cloud to show in which direction he'd lit out.

After that, Ortega became known as the only man to have stolen something from the greatest thieves of all, the digger Indians! But truth be told, that Indian left something else behind besides his pants...or maybe I should say in his pants! It was the most foul-smelling dung I have ever run across; so bad, in fact, that Ortega had to dig a second hole, deeper than the first he'd dug, to throw them pants in. Looking back on the whole espiside we began to understand how those Indians might have come by their peculiar name!

[Stefan Reuter]

Welcome Lieutenant,

I'm you will find a home in our Division.