Sergeant August Reis
Kentucky Post, Saturday, 2 May 1903, page 1
LEFT BY SOLDIER-It was a tender not on the face of it. It might have been the missive of one who was dying or of one who was going across stormy seas to face perils in the imminent deadly breach, fighting for his country in the heart of a Philippine war. The words were very few and very simple:
"I am going away so I leave you my jewelry." It was addressed to Sergeant Reis of the Third Infantry, stationed at Ft Thomas. Reis is a very important man. He is Provost Sergeant and so has charge of the prisoners some of whom are bad men. When Reis got the note he was not at all touched. He didn't weep. He felt more like fighting. Instead of the note being pathetic it was the reverse.
It was the grim facetiousness of a man who had been condemned to suffer imprisonment for violating some of Uncle Sam's military laws and who was at the time enjoying sweet liberty. There was a guardhouse delivery at Ft Thomas Wednesday night, when a number of prisoners escaped. One of them wrote the note for Reis, just before crawling through a hole in the prison door. Reis was so angry he did not even look for the "jewelry" bequeathed to him. In fact he is too fine a soldier to have anything to do with that kind of gewgaws.
The jewelry was the leg shackles which the note writing prisoner removed from his limbs before getting away.
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Kentucky Post, Monday, 18 April 1904,
page 8
Sergeant August Reis, Company I, the well known Provost Sergeant
of the post, who will go to Alaska with his company, has had an interesting
experience in that region before. In 1889 the Sergeant with two comrades, who
were discharged at the same time at Ft Snelling, Minn. went to the Klondike to
realize a fortune.
After 19 months experience, of a rugged variety the Sergeant returned to the United States and rejoined his old regiment, where he has since remained.