Navy football team, and serving as an assistant coach at Princeton. Poe would often return to Princeton as an assistant coach, including the National Championship season of 1903. It was while serving as an assistant coach that Poe is credited with saying "If you won't be beat, you can't be beat," which became the team motto for many seasons. Soldier, adventurer Poe enlisted in the Fifth Maryland Infantry Regiment, and after over three years had risen to the rank of corporal, when the United States declared war on Spain on April 25, 1898. His regiment was mustered into Federal service on May 14, and sent to Tampa, Florida, on June 3, in preparation for an invasion of Cuba. However, the regiment was unable to obtain transport to Cuba, and spent the war in Tampa, and later in Huntsville, Alabama, before being mustered out of service on October 22,. Poe worked as a cowpuncher in New Mexico, but longed for action and enlisted in the Regular Army's 23rd Infantry. He was sent to the island of Sulu in the Philippines, where he served in Company F and as an orderly on General Bates' staff, seeing none of the action he had been hoping for. Declining to apply for a commission, Poe instead asked his father to buy out his enlistment, and worked as a surveyor in Baltimore for a few months before returning to New Mexico. In 1903, Poe joined the Kentucky National Guard, his detachment of which was sent to Princeton, Kentucky, to suppress uprisings which led to the "Black Patch Wars". Later that year, he wrote to the Commandant of the Marine Corps, volunteering his services in the looming Panamanian revolution. He was enlisted and sailed for Panama aboard the , but saw no action, and he returned to the United States. There, he engaged briefly in the coal-mining business in Charleston, West Virginia, before moving to Tonopah, Nevada, to engage in silver mining there. Hearing that war was breaking out between Honduras and Nicaragua, Poe left Nevada in 1907, intending to join the Nicaraguan army. However, when his ship reached Honduras, anxious that the war was ending, he joined the army of Honduras. He was made a captain and put in charge of a gun in the siege of Amapala. The war ended with the defeat of Honduran forces, and Poe returned to Nevada and mining. The following