Part 5 (1/2)
or without, so the void was filled.
A fire was built of dried limbs from a brush pile and the beef placed in a shallow frying pan to stew, Frank Stone being the chef de cuisine. The mess sat around with anxious faces and whetted appet.i.tes. Finally one of them, in s.h.i.+fting his position, struck the end of a limb on which the pan was resting and dumped the whole business into the dirt and ashes.
The catastrophe placed us rather than the beef in a stew and we went to bed supperless.
Under such conditions it is, perhaps, but natural that the case should be re-opened, a new trial granted and a verdict rendered to follow Paul's other injunction, ”Whatsoever is set before you, eat, asking no questions for conscience sake.”
I can not recall positively that either of us ever indulged even as to gravy, but I think I can say that neither of us was particepts criminis in the act of impressment. If guilty, we were only accessories after the fact.
”THEM MOLa.s.sES.”
During our stay at Jacksboro the farmers in that section were making sorghum syrup, which most of them called ”them mola.s.ses.” Near one of our picket posts lived a Baptist minister named Lindsay, from whose better half we purchased vegetables and other edibles. On one occasion I was unable to make exact change and left owing her 12 1-2 cents in Confederate money. Two weeks later I was on picket again and paid her the balance due. She was so much surprised that a soldier should have the moral sense to recognize and meet such an obligation that she formed a very exalted estimate of my honesty and when I afterwards went to buy some of ”them mola.s.ses” she requested her husband to take it from a barrel she had reserved for her own use ”for,” he said ”she likes 'em powerful thick.” I had occasion to regret her kindness, for it was so thick that it was with difficulty that I could get it either into or out of my canteen, and in view of her partiality I did not have the heart to suggest that a thinner grade would be preferred. She was a kind and motherly soul, and yet some of the soldiers would steal from her. To prevent or minimize their depredations she cooped a noisy rooster underneath her bedroom as a sort of watch dog to notify her of any midnight foragers. A few mornings afterwards she awoke to find, aside from other losses, that her feathered sentinel had been caught asleep upon his post by some soldier, who was chicken-mouthed, if he was not chicken-hearted.
RATIONS.
Rations as one of the sinews of war, deserve something more than incidental mention in these memories and as no more favorable opportunity may occur, it may be as well to give them more extended notice in connection with the incident just related.
Confederate rations during the early years of the war were as I recollect them, not only fair in quality but ample in quant.i.ty. As evidence of this fact I remember that the boys were sometimes so indifferent when rations hour arrived that it was difficult to induce them to draw their allowance promptly. Charles Catlin was our company commissary and I can hear now his clear, sharp tones as they rang out on the frosty evening air among the Virginia mountains in '61, ”Come up and get your beef. Are you going to keep a man standing out here in the cold all night?”
As the war progressed the resources of the Confederacy, limited to its own production by the cordon of hostile gunboats that girded its ports, became more and more heavily taxed and its larder grew leaner and leaner. But little wheat was raised in the Gulf States and few beeves except in Texas. We were reduced largely to meal and bacon rations, and the supply of these sometimes recalled the instructions in regard to loading a squirrel rifle given by its owner to a friend to whom he had loaned it: ”Put in very little powder, if any.” Cooking squads were detailed from each company and once a day the wagons would drive up and issue three small corn pones to each man. Some of the boys, whose hunger was chronic, would begin on theirs and never stop until the last pone had been eaten.
Bob Winter belonged to this cla.s.s and eight or ten hours after his daily rations had disappeared d.i.c.k Morris would draw a pone or half a pone from his haversack and say, ”Bob, here's some bread if you want it,” and Bob would reply, ”d.i.c.k, I don't want to take it if you need it,” and d.i.c.k would answer, ”Bob, I've told you a thousand times that I wouldn't give you anything that I wanted,” and Bob would succ.u.mb and so would the bread.
When our changes of base were rapid the squads would cook up two or three days' rations and in hot weather the bread would mould and when broken open the fungus growth looked very much like cobweb. Some of the pones had also the appearance of slow convalescence from chill and fever. Under such conditions it could hardly be considered very palatable except upon the idea of a rustic friend of mine, who, in commending the virtues of India Cholagogue, was asked as to its palatability. ”O,” said he, ”it's very palatable, but the meanest stuff to take you ever saw.”
Most of the boys had left well-to-do homes to enter the service and while they bore privation and hunger without a murmur, there would sometimes come into their hard lives a craving for the good things they had left behind. Gathered about the camp-fire, cold and tired and hungry, they would discuss the dish that each liked best and their lips would grow tremulous as they thought of the day when hope would become realization. Joe Derry, I remember, could never be weaned away from the memory of his mother's nice mince pies and black-berry jam. I can see his eyes dance now as he magnified their merits. Bob Winter's ultimate thule in the gastronomic line was sliced potato pie, while Jim Thomas would never tire of singing the praises of 'possum baked with potatoes.
Louis Picquet said to him one day, ”Jim, if I ever get home again I am going to have one dinner of 'possum and 'taters if it kills me.” But it was left to the epicurean taste of John Henry Casey to reach the acme of these unsatisfied longings when, recognizing the value of quant.i.ty as well as quality he declared that nothing less would satisfy him than ”a chicken pie big enough to trot a horse and buggy around on.”
But for extending this ration sketch to an irrational length I might have said something of the May Pop leaves that we cooked for ”greens” in North Georgia, of the half hardened corn transformed into meal by means of an improvised grater prepared by driving nails through the side of a tin canteen, of the pork issued to us in Tennessee with the hair still on it, of the hog skins that we ate at Inka, Miss., and of many other such things, but they would probably fail to interest the reader as they did the actors in those far off days.
CHAPTER IV.
TRANSFERRED TO THE COAST.
Our enlistment as artillery had so far proven a delusion and a snare.
The Confederacy had no guns with which to equip us and we had found no opportunity to capture any. During our stay at Jacksboro Capt. Allen succeeded in securing from the War Department the transfer of the Oglethorpes to the 2nd South Carolina Artillery, then in service at Charleston. Oct. 9, '62, at 6 p. m. we fell into line, gave three cheers for our late companions in arms and as the setting sun crimsoned with its last rays the lofty summit of the c.u.mberland, we filed out of the village to the tune of
”We are sons of old Aunt Dinah, And we go where we've amind to And we stay where we're inclined to, And we don't care a----cent.”
and our sojourn in Jacksonboro was a thing of the past.
Reaching Augusta Oct. 13, we were dismissed until the 23rd, when we went into camp at the Bush Ground, near the city. Why we did not proceed at once to our command in Charleston has always been to the writer an unsolved problem. We remained in Augusta until Dec. 9, when orders were received to report to Gen. H. W. Mercer, at Savannah. Col. Geo. A.
Gordon, in command of the 13th Ga. Battalion was endeavoring to raise it to a regiment. As he lacked two companies and as the Oglethorpes had 120 men on its roll an effort was made to divide the company. On Dec. 11 a vote was taken, the result showing a majority against division. Dec. 15 we were formally attached to the 63rd Ga. Regiment, ranking as Co. A.
Our quarters were located just in the rear of Thunderbolt Battery and here we remained for more than twelve months in the discharge of semi-garrison duty.
A STUDY IN INSECT LIFE.
The period covered by our service on the coast formed a sort of oasis in our military life. The Federal gunboats were kind enough to extend social courtesies to us only at long range and longer intervals. We fought and bled, it is true, but not on the firing line. The foes that troubled us most, were the fleas and sand fleas and mosquitoes that infested that sections. They never failed to open the spring campaign promptly and from their attacks by night and day no vigilance on the picket line could furnish even slight immunity. If the old time practice of venesection as a therapeutic agent was correct in theory our hygienic condition ought to have been comparatively perfect. During the ”flea season” it was not an unusual occurrence for the boys after fruitless efforts to reach the land of dreams, to rise from their couches, divest themselves of their hickory s.h.i.+rts and break the silence of the midnight air by vigorously thres.h.i.+ng them against a convenient tree in the hope of finding temporary ”surcease of sorrow” from this ever-present affliction. It was said that if a handful of sand were picked up half of it would jump away. I can not vouch for the absolute correctness of this statement, but I do know that I killed, by actual count, one hundred and twenty fleas in a single blanket on which I had slept the preceding night and I can not recall that the morning was specially favorable for that species of game either. I remember further that as we had in camp no ”Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals,” I corked up an average specimen of these insects to see how long he would live without his daily rations. At the end of two weeks he had grown a trifle thin, but was still a very lively corpse. But these were not the only ”ills, that made calamity of so long a life,” for as Moore might have said, if his environment had been different,