Hardtack and coffee

by John Davis Billings

The occasions which called the Signal Corps into activity were various, but they were most frequently employed in reporting the movements of troops, sometimes of the Union, sometimes of the enemy. They took post on elevated stations, whether a hill, a tall tree, or the top of a building. Any position from which they could command a broad view of the surrounding country was occupied for their purpose. If nature did not always provide a suitable place for lookout, art came to the rescue, and signal towers of considerable height were built for this class of workers, who, like the cavalry, were the “eyes” of the army if not the ears. I remember several of these towers which stood before Petersburg in 1864. They were of especial use there in observing the movements of troops within the enemy’s lines, as they stood, I should judge, from one hundred to one hundred and fifty feet high. Although these towers were erected somewhat to the rear of the Union main lines, and were a very open trestling, they were yet a conspicuous target for the enemy’s long-range guns and mortar-shells.

SIGNAL TREE-TOP.

Sometimes the nerve of the flagman was put to a very severe test, as he stood on the summit of one of these frail structures waving his flag, his situation too like that of Mahomet’s coffin, while the Whitworth bolts whistled sociably by him, saying, “Where is he? Where is he?” or, by another interpretation, “Which one? Which one?” Had one of these bolts hit a corner post of the lookout, the chances for the flagman and his lieutenant to reach the earth by a new route would have been favorable, although the engineers who built them claimed that with three posts cut away the tower would still stand. But, as a matter of fact, I believe no shot ever seriously injured one of the towers, though tons weight of iron must have been hurled at them. The roof of the Avery House, before Petersburg, was used for a signal station, and the shells of the enemy’s guns often tore through below much to the alarm of the signal men above.

Signalling was carried on during an engagement between different parts of the army. By calling for needed re-enforcements, or giving news of their approach, or requesting ammunition, or reporting movements of the enemy, or noting the effects of shelling,—in these and a hundred kindred ways the corps made their services invaluable to the troops. Sometimes signal officers on shore communicated with others on shipboard, and, in one instance, Lieutenant Brown told me that through the information he imparted to a gunboat off Suffolk, in 1863, regarding the effects of the shot which were thrown from it, General Longstreet had since written him that the fire was so accurate he was compelled to withdraw his troops. The signals were made from the tower of the Masonic Hall in Suffolk, whence they were taken up by another signal party on the river bluff, and thence communicated to the gunboat.

A SIGNAL TOWER BEFORE PETERSBURG, VA.

Not long since, General Sherman, in conversation, alluded to a correspondent of the New York “Herald” whom he had threatened to hang, declaring that had he done so his “death would have saved ten thousand lives.” The relation of this anecdote brings out another interesting phase of signal-corps operations. It seems that one of our signal officers had succeeded in reading the signal code of the enemy, and had communicated the same to his fellow-officers. With this code in their possession, the corps was enabled to furnish valuable information directly from Rebel headquarters, by reading the Rebel signals, continuing to do so during the Chattanooga and much of the Atlanta campaign, when the enemy’s signal flags were often plainly visible. Suddenly this source of information was completely cut off by the ambition of the correspondent to publish all the news, and the natural result was the enemy changed the code. This took place just before Sherman’s attack on Kenesaw Mountain (June, 1864), and it is to the hundreds slaughtered there that he probably refers. General Thomas was ordered to arrest the reporter, and have him hanged as a spy; but old “Pap” Thomas’ kind heart banished him to the north of the Ohio for the remainder of the war, instead.

When Sherman’s headquarters were at Big Shanty, there was a signal station located in his rear, on the roof of an old gin-house, and this signal officer, having the “key” to the enemy’s signals, reported to Sherman that he had translated this signal from Pine Mountain to Marietta,—“Send an ambulance for General Polk’s body,”—which was the first tidings received by our army that the fighting bishop had been slain. He was hit by a shell from a volley of artillery fired by order of General Sherman.

To the men in the other arms of the service, who saw this mysterious and almost continuous waving of flags, it seemed as if every motion was fraught with momentous import. “What could it all be about?” they would ask one another. A signal station was located, in ’61-2, on the top of what was known as the Town Hall (since burned) in Poolesville, Md., within a few rods of my company’s camp, and, to the best of my recollection, not an hour of daylight passed without more or less flag-waving from that point. This particular squad of men did not seem at all fraternal, but kept aloof, as if (so we thought) they feared they might, in an unguarded moment, impart some of the important secret information which had been received by them from the station at Sugar Loaf Mountain or Seneca. Since the war, I have learned that their apparently excited and energetic performances were, for the most part, only practice between stations for the purpose of acquiring familiarity with the code, and facility in using it.