Hardtack and coffee

by John Davis Billings

CLEANING UP.

So, in regard to using our mess kettles to boil clothes in, it might be asked “Why not?” Were they not used to boil our meat and potatoes in, to make our bean, pea, and meat soups in, to boil our tea and coffee in, to make our apple and peach sauce in? Why not use them as wash-boilers? Well, “gentle reader,” while it might at first interfere somewhat with your appetite to have your food cooked in the wash-boiler, you would soon get used to it; and so this complex use of the mess kettles soon ceased to affect the appetite, or to shock the sense of propriety of the average soldier as to the eternal fitness of things, for he was often compelled by circumstances to endure much greater improprieties. It would indeed have been a most admirable arrangement in many respects could each man have been provided with an excellent Magee Range with copper-boiler annex, and set tubs near by; but the line had to be drawn somewhere, and so everything in the line of impedimenta was done away with, unless it was absolutely essential to the service. For this reason we could not take along a well equipped laundry, but must make some articles do double or triple service.

It may be asked what kind of a figure the men cut as washerwomen. Well, some of them were awkward and imperfect enough at it; but necessity is a capital teacher, and, in this as in many other directions, men did perforce what they would not have attempted at home. It was not necessary, however, for every man to do his own washing, for in most companies there was at least one man who, for a reasonable recompense, was ready to do such work, and he usually found all he could attend to in the time he had off duty. There was no ironing to be done, for “boiled shirts,” as white-bosomed shirts were called, were almost an unknown garment in the army except in hospitals. Flannels were the order of the day. If a man had the courage to face the ridicule of his comrades by wearing a white collar, it was of the paper variety, and white cuffs were unknown in camp.

In the department of mending garments each man did his own work, or left it undone, just as he thought best; but no one hired it done. Every man had a “housewife” or its equivalent, containing the necessary needles, yarn, thimble, etc., furnished him by some mother, sister, sweetheart, or Soldier’s Aid Society, and from this came his materials to mend or darn with.

Now, the average soldier was not so susceptible to the charms and allurements of sock-darning as he should have been; for this reason he always put off the direful day until both heels looked boldly and with hardened visage out the back-door, while his ten toes ranged themselves en échelon in front of their quarters. By such delay or neglect good ventilation and the opportunity of drawing on the socks from either end were secured. The task of once more restricting the toes to quarters was not an easy one, and the processes of arriving at this end were not many in number. Perhaps the speediest and most unique, if not the most artistic, was that of tying a string around the hole. This was a scheme for cutting the Gordian knot of darning, which a few modern Alexanders put into execution. But I never heard any of them commend its comforts after the job was done.

A HOUSEWIFE.

Then, there were other men who, having arranged a checker-board of stitches over the holes, as they had seen their mothers do, had not the time or patience to fill in the squares, and the inevitable consequence was that both heels and toes would look through the bars only a few hours before breaking jail again. But there were a few of the boys who were kept furnished with home-made socks, knit, perhaps, by their good old grandmas, who seemed to inherit the patience of the grandams themselves; for, whenever there was mending or darning to be done, they would sit by the hour, and do the work as neatly and conscientiously as any one could desire. I am not wide of the facts when I say that the heels of the socks darned by these men remained firm when the rest of the fabric was well spent.

There was little attempt made to repair the socks drawn from the government supplies, for they were generally of the shoddiest description, and not worth it. In symmetry, they were like an elbow of stove-pipe; nor did the likeness end here, for, while the stove-pipe is open at both ends, so were the socks within forty-eight hours after putting them on.