The spring of 1863 was particularly favorable to the development of typhoid fever, and a good many men in our regiment were in the hospital with that disease. The surgeon ordered a gill of whiskey to be served to every man daily, and as an inducement for him to “put it where it would do the most good”—at least in the surgeon’s opinion—he was told that he would not be excused from duty if reported on the sick list. The whiskey was usually taken by the men and put into their canteens with the water, but in very many cases it did not take such a roundabout way in reaching its destination. In my “mess” was a good, orthodox, prohibitionist deacon, a man whose example I was told before leaving home that I could consistently follow in all things—especially in spiritual things. One day he remarked to me that he had observed that I did not take my ration of whiskey when it was dealt out. I told him that I had not felt the need of it. He replied that he was very much afraid of the typhoid fever, and had no scruples in regard to the taking of a little whiskey as a precautionary measure, and if I was going to continue to refuse to take my ration of it, he wished I would let it be poured into my canteen, and he would turn it into his own when we got back to our quarters;—“only be careful,” said he, “that there is no water in your canteen.” After that I allowed the whiskey to be poured into my canteen; but the good deacon’s argument as to its being a preventive for typhoid fever was so convincing that I did not allow it to be transferred to his.
As is well known, a wide and almost impassable gulf of difference exists between the officers and the rank and file in the regular army. But I had not been long in the volunteer service before I discovered that considerable difference existed even there between the private soldier and the officer. To illustrate. While in Suffolk there happened to be an “r” in the month. Walking along the principal street one day, I espied in the window of a restaurant a card, upon which was printed or painted in letters of large dimensions these two words: “Steamed Oysters.” Visions of Pawtucket and Providence river bivalves immediately came up before me, and I then and there resolved to have a good square meal of “steamed oysters,” even though it should pecuniarily impoverish me. So, entering the restaurant, I seated myself upon one of the unoccupied high stools at the oyster bar. And here I will remark that I could not have felt the importance of my elevated position any more if my blouse had been covered with shoulder-straps. Presently the proprietor of the establishment presented himself, and eyeing me with an air of indifference almost amounting to contempt, he asked me what I wanted. I replied, “Steamed oysters.” I confess I was somewhat surprised and considerably “down in the mouth” when he informed me that he couldn’t sell steamed oysters to a private soldier. My suggestion that he might overcome the difficulty by giving them to me, failed to secure the much-coveted bivalves, and I retired from the restaurant a sadder but wiser man than when I entered it.
As I remarked at the outset, there was considerable difference between the private soldier and the officer even in the volunteer service; and this was, as I have shown, particularly true as to which one should eat steamed oysters. But the line had to be drawn somewhere, I suppose, and so at Suffolk they drew it at steamed oysters, and, unfortunately for the man who was serving his country at thirteen dollars a month, he “got left.”
Chapter VIII.
While the Eleventh regiment was in service only nine months, and was never in action as a full regiment, yet it lost in that time two colonels. A certain fatality appeared to await those who were sent to take command of the regiment during the early part of its term of service. It seemed at one time as if the regiment was raised for the sole purpose of giving those who were to become colonels of other Rhode Island regiments an opportunity to perfect themselves in battalion drill and other military movements before assuming command elsewhere—a sort of stepping-stone, as it were, to something which was considered more desirable. There was, for instance, Colonel Edwin Metcalf, who went out with us and who left us to take command of the Third Rhode Island. Then there was Colonel Horatio Rogers, who came to us from the Third regiment and remained less than two weeks, leaving us to take command of the Second Rhode Island. The next to put in an appearance was Colonel George E. Church, who had previously served as lieutenant-colonel of the Seventh Rhode Island. He remained with us until the expiration of our term of enlistment.
It is not within the province of a private soldier—more especially a “raw recruit”—to criticise his superiors, and consequently I will not attempt it, notwithstanding this is the “piping time of peace,” and all fear of the guard-house has forever vanished. I will say, however, that all of the officers named had their peculiarities, and that our lieutenant-colonel was peculiarly peculiar; and yet I believe him to have been every inch a soldier—at any rate, there was no such word as fear in his dictionary. He was in command when the regiment came the nearest to being in an engagement, and I fancy I see him now, mounted on his horse and riding at the head of the column, wearing a moth-eaten blouse and an exceedingly dilapidated straw hat, with a very black “T. D.” clay pipe stuck in his mouth, the bowl downwards. He looked more like the “cowboy” of modern times than the pictures of military heroes which I used to see in my school-books when a boy. This was our lieutenant-colonel—John Talbot Pitman. He had good “staying qualities.” He never threw up his commission, nor did he die. He remained with us to the last, and rose considerably in the estimation of the men after his appearance at the head of the regiment at the time I have just mentioned. Men everywhere—especially soldiers—admire pluck. Our lieutenant-colonel had pluck, even though at times his heart seemed somewhat lacking in tenderness. He never winked at any breach of discipline on the part of an officer or a private while he was in command of the regiment. If at times he appeared to have too little consideration for his men, he never failed to exact the fullest measure of consideration for them from all others.
Colonel Metcalf, as I have stated, came to us first, and was the first to leave us. Universal regret on the part of officers and men was felt when he took his departure for Hilton Head.
Colonel Rogers did not remain with us long enough for us to learn to like him or dislike him. He came to us “sp’ilin’ for a fight,” his heart’s desire all the time he was with us was to fight, and when he found that he couldn’t fight the rebels with us, he began to fight the War Department for a “change of base;” and in order to have peace within our own borders, and in response to a very general demand on the part of the loyal North for a vigorous prosecution of the war, coupled with a declaration on the part of certain northern newspapers that no further delay in pushing “On to Richmond” would be tolerated without a satisfactory reason being given therefor, the authorities at Washington compromised matters by sending the plucky colonel to the Second Rhode Island regiment, where he “honored his regiment, his State and himself by his gallant deeds.” It is, however, but simple justice to the Eleventh regiment to say that the men were hopeful that Colonel Rogers’ vigorous and persistent efforts with the War Department to relieve them from the disagreeable duty which they were performing at the Convalescent Camp would be crowned with success. Service in the field was coveted.