Hardtack and coffee

by John Davis Billings

A SPARE MAN AND SPARE HORSES.

It was fun in the artillery to see one of these dainty men, on his first arrival, put in charge of a pair of spare horses,—spare enough, too, usually. It was expected of him that he would groom, feed, and water them. As it often happened that such a man had had no experience in the care of horses, he would naturally approach the subject with a good deal of awe. When the Watering Call blew, therefore, and the bridles and horses were pointed out to him by the sergeant, the fun began. Taking the bridle, he would look first at it, then at the horse, as if in doubt which end of him to put it on. In going to water, the drivers always bridled the horse which they rode, and led the other by the halter. But our unfledged soldier seemed innocent of all proper information. For the first day or two he would lead his charges; then, as his courage grew with acquaintance, he would finally mount the near one, and, with his legs crooked up like a V, cling for dear life until he got his lesson learned in this direction. But all the time that he was getting initiated he was a ridiculous object to observers.

The drilling of raw recruits of both the classes mentioned was no small part of the trials that fell to the lot of billeted officers, for they got hold of some of the crookedest sticks to make straight military men of that the country—or, rather, countries—produced. Not the least among the obstacles in the way of making good soldiers of them was the fact that the recruits of 1864-5, in particular, included many who could neither speak nor understand a word of English. In referring to the disastrous battle of Reams Station, not long since, the late General Hancock told me that the Twentieth Massachusetts Regiment had received an accession of about two hundred German recruits only two or three days before the battle, not one of whom could understand the orders of their commanding officers. It can be easily imagined how much time and patience would be required to mould such subjects as those into intelligent, reliable soldiery.

DRILLING THE AWKWARD SQUAD.

But outside of this class there were scores of men that spoke English who would “hay-foot” every time when they should “straw-foot.” They were incorrigibles in almost every military respect. Whenever they were out with a squad—usually the “awkward squad”—for drill, they made business lively enough for the sergeant in charge. When they stood in the rear rank their loftiest ambition seemed to be to walk up the backs of their file-leaders, and then they would insist that it was the file-leaders who were out of step. Members of the much abused front rank often had occasion to wish that the regulation thirteen inches from breast to back might be extended to as many feet; but when the march was backward in line, these front rank men would get square with their persecutors in the rear.

To see such men attempt to change step while marching was no mean show. I can think of nothing more apt to compare it with than the game of Hop Scotch, in which the player hops first on one foot, then on both; or to the blue jay, which, in uttering one of its notes, jumps up and down on the limb; and if such a squad under full headway were surprised with a sudden command to halt, they went all to pieces. It was no easy task to align them, for each man had a line of his own, and they would crane their heads out to see the buttons on the breast of the second man to such an extent that the sergeant might have exclaimed, with the Irish sergeant under like circumstances, “O be-gorra, what a bint row! Come out here, lads, and take a look at yoursels!”

The awkward squad excelled equally in the infantry manual-of-arms. Indeed, they displayed more real individuality here, I think, than in the marchings, probably because it was the more noticeable. At a “shoulder” their muskets pointed at all angles, from forty-five degrees to a vertical. In the attempt to change to a “carry,” a part of them would drop their muskets. At an “order,” no two of the butts reached the ground together, and if a man could not always drop his musket on his own toe he was a pretty correct shot with it on the toe of his neighbor. But, with all their awkwardness and slowness at becoming acquainted with a soldier’s duties, the recruits of the earlier years in time of need behaved manfully. They made a poor exhibition on dress parade, but could generally be counted on when more serious work was in hand. Sometimes, when they made an unusually poor display on drill or parade, they were punished—unjustly it may have been, for what they could not help—by being subjected to the knapsack drill, of which I have already spoken.

It was a prudential circumstance that the war came to an end when it did, for the quality of the material that was sent to the army in 1864 and 1865 was for the most part of no credit or value to any arm of the service. The period of enlistments from promptings of patriotism had gone by, and the man who entered the army solely from mercenary motives was of little or no assistance to that army when it was in need of valiant men, so that the chief burden and responsibility of the closing wrestle for the mastery necessarily fell largely on the shoulders of the men who bared their breasts for the first time in 1861, ’62, and ’63.

I have thus far spoken of a recruit in the usual sense of a man enlisted to fill a vacancy in an organization already in the field. But this seems the proper connection in which to say something of the experiences of men who enlisted with original regiments, and went out with the same in ’61 and ’62. In many respects, their education was obtained under as great adversity as fell to the lot of recruits. In some respects, I think their lot was harder. They knew absolutely nothing of war. They were stirred by patriotic impulse to enlist and crush out treason, and hurl back at once in the teeth of the enemy the charge of cowardice and accept their challenge to the arbitrament of war. These patriots planned just two moves for the execution of this desire: first, to enlist—to join some company or regiment; second, to have that regiment transferred at once to the immediate front of the Rebels, where they could fight it out and settle the troubles without delay. Their intense fervor to do something right away to humble the haughty enemy, made them utterly unmindful that they must first go to school and learn the art of war from its very beginnings, and right at that point their sorrows began.