Two or three hundred trained soldiers and several hundred recruits had made up the beginnings of the regiment.

Prescott and Holmes had been among the latest of the captains sent to the regiment, arriving in August.
And now Colonel Cleaves had just joined his command on orders from Washington.
With forty men in the headquarters company and some fifty in the machine-gun company, the rifle companies on this September day averaged about seventy men.

Nor had a full complement of officers yet arrived.
Dick Prescott and Greg Holmes, lately first lieutenants, as readers of former volumes of this series are aware, had received their commissions as captains just before joining the Ninety-ninth.
"This regiment is scheduled to go over at an early date," Colonel Cleaves had informed his regimental officers, at the conference of which we have just witnessed the close.

"Headquarters and machine-gun companies must be raised to their respective quotas of men, and each rifle company must be increased from seventy to two hundred and fifty men each.

New recruits will arrive every week.