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

[277] one-half inches long and two inches in diameter, and designed to hold pens, ink, and paper. Unrolled, it makes a little tablet of the length given and five and one-half inches wide, which was my writing-desk when no better was to be had.

The Turkish fez, with pendent tassel, was seen on the heads of some soldiers. Zouave regiments wore them. They did very well to lie around camp in, and in a degree marked their owner as a somewhat conspicuous man among his fellows, but they were not tolerated on line; few of them ever survived the first three months campaigning.

And this recalls the large number of the soldiers of ‘62 who did not wear the forage cap furnished by the government. They bought the “McClellan cap,” so called, at the hatters' instead, which in most cases faded out in a month. This the government caps did not do, with all their awkward appearance. They

A Zouave.

may have been coarse and unfashionable to the eye, but the colors would stand. Nearly every man embellished his cap with the number or letter of his company and regiment and the appropriate emblem. For infantry this emblem is a bugle, for artillery two crossed cannons, and for cavalry two crossed sabres.

One other item occurs to me, not entirely germane to the chapter, yet interesting enough to warrant its insertion. This was the great care exercised to have all equipments prominently marked with the regiment, company, and State to which the owner belonged. For example, on the back of the knapsack of every man in a regiment appeared in large lettering something like this: Co. B, 33d New York Regiment;