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| At the telegraphers' tent, Yorktown—May, 1862 These operators with their friends at dinner look quite contented, with their coffee in tin cups, their hard-tack and the bountiful appearing kettle at their feet. Yet their lot, as McClellan's army advanced toward Richmond and later, was to be far from enviable. ‘The telegraph service, writes General A. W. Greely, had neither definite personnel nor corps organization. It was simply a civilian bureau attached to the quartermatster's department, in which a few of its favored members received Commissions. The men who performed the dangerous work in the field were mere employees—mostly underpaid and often treated with scant considertion. During the war there occurred. in the line of duty more thin three hundred casualties among the operators—by disease, killed in battle, wounded, or made prisoners. Scores of these unfortunate victims left families dependent on charity, for the Government of the United States neither extended aid to their destitute families nor admitted needy survivors to a pensionable status.’ |
