three o'clock in the morning
In one blizzard the men of Truck 7 got only four hours ' sleep in four days . When they were not putting out fires they were compelled to turn in and shovel snow to help the paralyzed Street-Cleaning Department clear the way for their trucks . Their plight was virtually that of all the rest . What Colonel Roosevelt said of his Rough Riders after the fight in the trenches before Santiago , that it is the test of men 's nerve to have them roused up at three o'clock in the morning , hungry and cold , to fight an enemy attacking in the dark , and then have them all run the same way , -- forward , -- is true of the firemen as well , and , like the Rough Riders , they never failed when the test came . The firemen going to the front at the tap of the bell , no less surely to grapple with lurking death than the men who faced Mauser bullets , but with none of the incidents of glorious war , the flag , the hurrah , and all the things that fire a soldier 's heart , to urge them on , -- clinging , half naked , with numb fingers to the ladders as best they can while trying to put on their stiff and frozen garments , -- is one of the sights that make one proud of being a man . To see them in action , dripping icicles from helmet and coat , high upon the ladder , perhaps incased in solid ice and frozen to the rungs , yet holding the stream as steady to its work as if the spray from the nozzle did not fall upon them in showers of stinging hail , is very apt to make a man devoutly thankful that it is not his lot to fight fires in winter . It is only a few winters since , at the burning of a South Street warehouse , two pipemen had to be chopped from their ladder with axes , so thick was the armor of ice that had formed about and upon them while they worked .