John D. Billings, Hardtack and Coffee: The Unwritten Story of Army Life

[236] track of the army to die, was taken charge of, when the coast was clear, and nursed back into vitality enough to stand on at least three of his legs, when, by means of bits of tattered rope, twisted corn-husks, and odds and ends of leather which had seen better days, the sorry-looking brute, still bearing the brand U. S. or C. S. on his rump, partly concealed perhaps by his rusty oufit, was tackled into a nondescript vehicle, possibly the skeleton remains of what had been, in years

Going to Army Headquarters.

gone by, the elegant and stylish family carriage, but fully as often into a two-wheeled cart, which now answered all the purposes of the family in its altered circumstances. One would hardly expect to find in such a brute a Goldsmith Maid or a Jay Eye See in locomotion, and so as a matter of fact such a beast was urged on from behind by lusty thwacks from a cudgel, propelling the family at a headlong walkheadlong, because he was likely to go headlong at any moment, from lack of strength, over the rough Virginia roads.

When such a brute got to be pretty lively once more, unless he was concealed, he would soon fall into service again in one of the armies, and possibly another gasping skeleton left in his place; but later in the war all animals abandoned by the Union army were shot if any life remained in them, so that even this resource was to that extent cut