CARLISLE, Pa. — In an announcement that has every drill instructor and sanctimonious veteran in history absolutely apoplectic with shock, Army archivists have revealed that Lt. Andrew Rowan, the soldier who famously carried a critical message to rebel Gen.Calixto Garcia in the jungles of Cuba during the Spanish American War, was in fact a “lazy, shiftless turd.”

According to Col. Elmer "Fudd" Welsh, senior archivist for the Army's museum at historic Carlisle Barracks and the man who discovered the formerly lost documents, Rowan was apparently “a total dirt-bag who was only chosen by President McKinley because the President fully expected the mission to be an 'unmitigated fucking disaster.’ Thus, he asked his aide-de-camp to find him a 'hapless patsy to pin the whole goddamn mess on, for when it surely goes south.’”

Welsh went on to explain the irony of a nation that lauded Rowan for nearly 120 years as the proverbial 'Message To Garcia' hero, and seminal example of perseverance, when it turns out he was actually “quite a bumbling moron.”

During the Army's scouring of these recently discovered documents, it was revealed that Rowan himself had transcribed a personal account of the 'adventure' some years later. In one passage, he documented the truth behind the oft-vaunted story of his brief encounter with President McKinley, where he famously “...asked no questions, but simply carried out the deed.”