The other night I was on this same shift with another fellow and we were real busy up until about 3 A.M., so we shut off the power unit when things calmed down a bit and got some sack time.   Business picked up about 4 o'clock so it was necessary to start the unit again.   In order to appreciate what follows, you will have to sort of put yourself in my place, and also to realize the completeness of the darkness that is over this section at that time in the morning – believe me, you can't see anything, and even a flashlight can't penetrate the blackness more than five feet and then it is blurred.  Well, I took my light and proceeded to venture forth into the night (the power unit is around the corner of the building).  I had just swung around the corner, had my light on the unit, when I heard a snort!  I swung my light to the left and there about thirty feet away was a set of green eyes!  I wasted little time in my return trip in after the other man with me.  All the time I could visualize such animal as the kind that had killed a native a few nights before, and little did I want to do with that.  Anyway, back out we went, this time with two lights.  Again we got to the corner of the building and we saw the eyes weaving back and forth.

     This time, with the two lights we could make out a black shape, close to the ground, and two eyes in front of it still weaving.  Finally we ventured a step closer, and as we stepped the darn thing snorted again.  (Pause for a moment and try to put yourself there, dark, terribly dark, no light to speak of and just the two of us).  After the snort we withdrew in a cloud of dust, back to the sanctuary of our room, and we got two more men.  This time we had three lights, four men, I had a machine gun, and one of the others had a machine gun.  Back to the corner we went and there was the weaving green eyes, a black low animal – we could make out the shape, no more except a soul-chilling noise coming from it.  One step closer and all of a sudden the eyes started for us!  I aimed and the darn gun jammed, so I hollered "Shoot!"  A shot and the eyes went out. Moment to collect our wits and also our courage, which had drained completely away, and we slowly went over.  We had got it.  No miss there.  There on the ground it lay, quite dead, gasping a wee bit, there it lay dead – a cow!

     Talk about a bunch of foolish-feeling men, we took the cake.  All tried to blame the other.  The guy who shot said I gave the firing order, one said he couldn't see, another said he was behind and had nothing to do with it, I said I was not at fault etc.  Yet I believe it would happen again under similar circumstances.  We were all to blame come right down to it. It wouldn't have been so bad, but the darned cow had gotten away from some native, I suppose, and she had a rope around her neck which had caught in a stump and was choking her – accounting for the snorts.  She must have been lying down, which accounts for the low black shape, weaving eyes due to her efforts to get away.  When she started to get up, it appeared to us as if she was coming at us.  Easy to analyze, but by no means bringing the cow back.  Next day the natives had a ceremony over her (she was quite sacred) and then we had to bury her.  She now keeps the power unit company, and is the subject for severe criticism on my unlucky soul.  So be it: A sign now resides over the machine gun "This gun is to be used exclusively on cows and other dangerous animals."

Thanks to Tom Dow, son of Cpl. Russell E. Dow for suppling the above which was published in the Piscataquis Observer in Dover-Foxcroft, Maine circa 1946  6/2000

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