The drummers were active participants in the guard mounting exercises which took place about 9 o’clock in the morning, and usually there was from one to two hours’ practice among the musicians in the forenoon, which was repeated in the afternoon unless there was a battalion drill, in which case they took part in the manœuvres of the troops.
Their next duty was at dress parade, where they took a prominent part in what is the most pleasing and spectacular affair of the day.
At 9 o’clock they assemble again and beat the tattoo for the evening roll call, and fifteen minutes later taps are sounded and the day’s duties are ended.
In a camp there were always some heavy sleepers and it was the business of the drummers in beating the morning reveille to make noise enough to awake them. Many a time have I seen a fellow rush out of his tent attired in nothing but shirt, drawers and cap and take his place in the ranks hardly in time to answer “here” when his name was called.
THE MUSIC OF THE DRUMS.
Ringing with a siren’s song,
Throbbing with a country’s wrong,
Making patriots brave and strong,
Foes must die or yield.
Calling out the new-born day,
Marking each night’s gentle sway,
Ready whate’er comes.
Calls to duty, calls to play,
Calls for rest and calls for fray
Rolling, roaring all the day,
The Music of the Drums.
Fife and drum have been heard in every camp and upon all of the battlefields of the world. And for a marching column there is nothing like martial music of the good old-fashioned kind, such as inspired the continental heroes at Lexington, Yorktown and Bunker Hill, and rallied the boys of ’61, and later led them in all the marches through the South.
Martial music seems to have gone out of fashion in these up-to-date days, and what little there is, is but a poor apology, with the bugle blasts interjected between the rub-a-dub-dubs of the drummers who hardly know their a b c’s about snare drumming.
I have heard but one good drum corps since the war, and that was at the G. A. R. gathering at Buffalo a few years ago. An old time drum corps, who styled themselves the “Continentals” were present. It was composed of veterans over 70 years of age, and, say, they could double discount any other organization present.