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John D. Billings, Hardtack and Coffee: The Unwritten Story of Army Life, chapter 18 (search)
ay the average infantryman's wardrobe was what he had on. Only that and nothing more. At the first start from camp many would burden themselves with much more than the above, but after a few miles tramp the roadside would be sprinkled with the cast-away articles. There seemed to be a difference between Eastern and Western troops in this respect, for reasons which I will not attempt now to analyze, for Grant says (Memoirs, vol. II., pp. 190-191):-- I saw scattered along the road, from Culpeper to Germania Ford, wagon-loads of new blankets and overcoats thrown away by the troops to lighten their knapsacks; an improvidence I had never witnessed before. It was a way the Army of the Potomac had of getting into light marching order. When the infantry were ordered in on a charge, they always left their knapsacks behind them, which they might or might not see again. And whenever they were surprised and compelled to fall back hastily, they were likely to throw aside everything th
John D. Billings, Hardtack and Coffee: The Unwritten Story of Army Life, chapter 19 (search)
s used as clothes-lines, from which depended socks, shoes, here and there a shirt, perhaps a towel or handkerchief. But if the weather was cool the wash did not hang out in this way. When it became necessary to cross a stream in the night, huge fires were built on its banks, with a picket at hand, whose duty it was to keep them burning until daylight, or until the army had crossed. A greater number of mishaps occurred in fording by night than by day even then. During Meade's retreat from Culpeper, in the fall of 1863, --it was the night of October 11,--my company forded the Rappahannock after dark, and went into camp a few rods away from the ford; and I remember what a jolly night the troops made of it when they came to this ford. At short intervals I was awakened from slumber by the laughter or cheers of the waders, as they made merry at the expense of some of their number, who came out after immersion using language which plainly indicated their disbelief in that kind of baptism
John D. Billings, Hardtack and Coffee: The Unwritten Story of Army Life, chapter 20 (search)
pended at the side; its wooden bucket for water, and iron slush-bucket for grease, hanging from the hind axle; and its canvas cover, which when closely drawn in front and rear, as it always was on the march, made quite a satisfactory close carriage. As a pleasure carriage, however, they were not considered a success. When the Third Corps was wintering at Brandy Station in 1863-4 the concert troupe, which my company boasted was engaged to give a week of evening entertainments not far from Culpeper, in a large hexagonal stockade, which would seat six or seven hundred persons, and which had been erected for the purpose by one Lieutenant Lee, then on either General French's or General Birney's staff — I cannot now say which. To convey us thither over the intervening distance of four or five miles, as I now remember, we hired a mule-driver with his army wagon. More than twenty-three years have since elapsed, but those twelve or fourteen rides, after dark, across the rough country and f
John D. Billings, Hardtack and Coffee: The Unwritten Story of Army Life, Index. (search)
e Heights, Va., 367 Century Magazine, 407-8 Chancellorsville, 71, 331,349,388 Chattanooga, 262,270,362,403 Chicago, 135 City Point, Va., 115, 121,320,350-51 Clemens, Samuel, 106 Cold Harbor, 238 Committee on Military Affairs, 315 Confederate States Army. Armies: Army of Northern Virginia, 235, 406-7; State Troops, Infantry: 1st Georgia, 270 Copperheads, 20 Corps badges, 250-68,368 Corse, John M., 400-401 Covington, Ky., 100 Crook, George, 267 Culpeper, Va., 317,353 Davis, Jefferson, 64 Davis, W. S., 329 Dayton, L. M., 401 Desertion, 157-63 Douglas, Stephen A., 15 Draft,68-69,215-16 Dry Tortugas, 156 Eaton, Joseph H., 130 Ellis, George, 51 Ely's Ford, Va., 384 Embler, A. Henry, 266 Emory, William H., 265 Enlisting, 34-42, 198-202 Envelopes (patriotic), 64-65 Everett, Edward, 16 Executions, 157-63 Faneuil Hall, 31,45 First Bull Run, 27, 251-53,298, 340,356 Flags, 338-40 Foraging, 231-49