1902 - Special Orders directing that transportation be arranged for Corporal Eugene Dupree, who had fought at the Battle of Tientsin, to return to the United States via Japan following the completion of his enlistment

Peking, China, 1902. Unbound. Very good. This one-page Boxer Rebellion document on onion-skin paper reads:

United Sates Legation Guard
Peking, China, July 21st, 1902
Special Orders No. 63 (Extract)

1. There being no Army Transport available the Quartermaster Department will furnish transportation by commercial line to Eugene Dupree, late Corporal, Co. "B", 9th Infantry, discharged by expiration of service from Tonggu [Tanggu], China, to Nagasaki, Japan, where upon arrival he will report . . . for additional transportation to the United States. . .."

An endorsement on the reverse from the "Office of the Depot Quartermaster, Nagasaki, Japan, Nov. 6th 1902 reads:

"Transportation furnished the within named discharged soldier form this point to San Francisco, Cal. O the U.S.A.T. Crook."

. Dupree had deployed to China with the U.S. Army's 9th Infantry Regiment. He fought in the bloody campaign to relieve the international settlement at Tientsin (Tiajin) and the legations at Peking (Beijing) which were under siege by a combined force of Boxers (the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists or Yìhéquán, which was a violent, anti-foreign and anti-Christian peasant movement) and the Imperial Chinese Army that lifted the siege of the international community. After victory at Peking, the 9th began occupation duty, and Dupree's company was assigned to the logistics base at Tanggu, a port district within Tientsin.

(For more information, see Dupree's letter to the editor "At Battle of Tientsin: New Bern Boy Tells of His Experience. Slaughter of Chinese. With the Famous 9th" published in the 7 September 1900 issue of the New Bern Weekly Journal, Bowden and Warner's The Boxer Rebellion, and Harlow's Logistical Support of the China Relief Expedition.)

Original source American documents letters from the Boxer Rebellion are exceptionally scarce. At the time of listing, no others are for sale in the trade. Two similar items have appeared at auction per the Rare Book Hub, and OCLC shows several institutions hold American Boxer Rebellion personal papers collections.

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