Photographs:  Company F, Circa 1900

The Men of Company 'F'

Company F, 14th Infantry Regiment, photo taken circa 1900.  Seated in the front row, fifth from the left, is Sgt. Robert Miesse, grandfather of Candace Miesse, 1/14th web site webmaster for the years 2007-2010.

The faces in these photos belong to the men of the 14th Infantry, F Company . . . men who fought at the Zapote River in the Philippine Insurrection and who stormed the walls of Peking in August, 1900, to successfully rescue Westerners trapped there by the "Boxers" in what came to be known as the Boxer Rebellion.  This photograph belonged to my grandfather,  Robert Miesse, who was with F Company in these actions.

When I first began to digitize my family photographs, 9 years ago, this is one of the first that I scanned.  Because of the integrity of the old photos, I was able to scan at 1200 dpi and capture details never really visible before when looking at the original.  It's not a large photo, and the men's faces shown here are no more than a quarter inch high in the original.  As I brought them up on my computer screen, the power of each man's identity . . . looking out over all these years . . . just took my breath away.  They look like men I know . . . some like veterans I have known from the war of my own generation . . . Vietnam.

I have scanned many of the faces in F Company, so they can each take their place in the memorials on this site.  In our memorial section, "Stones: Where Dragons Lay", an effort has been made to list the final resting places of Golden Dragons of the past.  In their cases, we have only their names.  In the case of F Company, we have only their faces, but these faces speak to us and, when all the portraits are finished and repaired, they will also take their place among the Honored Dead of the 14th Infantry.

Top Row:

Second Row:

Third Row:

Fourth Row:

Fifth Row:

Seated Front Row:

4th row, 4 and 5; 5th row, 3

Acknowledgements:
Photographs:  Company F, Circa 1900
Copyright © 2012  14th Infantry Regiment Association
Last modified: April 17, 2016