“Our barracks there were in the blacksmith’s shop, without a floor, and built over the creek on the only street in the place. I took my bayonet out of the sheath and knocked at the kitchen door of the best looking house I could see. A lady answered, and I asked her if there was a gentleman in the house that I could talk to. She said no, her husband was with the officers. I said I came to buy a loaf of bread. She could spare me none, as she was going to give a dinner to the officers that evening, and at any rate she did not sell bread, that was not her business. I told her I was sorry there was no man in the house that I could talk to, but as there was not I must tell to her that I had been all over the village trying to buy food, and as I had not been able to get any I had taken this bayonet out with a view to fighting for some if I could not buy it; that I was soldiering to drive the rebels out, and that we had no commissariat; that that sort of thing was hard for me and the rest of the men, when officers could have banquets given them after being too ignorant to organize a commissariat. I told her a great many things, and apologized for having to talk to her so, and that I was sorry there was no man to talk to. She ended by giving me nearly a whole loaf, the price for which she said was a York sixpence. I put a York shilling down on the table and took my loaf to the barracks, where I cut it in as many pieces as there happened to be men in. As soon as I had put a piece in my mouth I found myself reeling and getting blind. They led me out and I fell into the creek, with my head under water; they picked me out again, but my appetite was all gone, and I gave away my bit of bread. I wandered about, and after awhile heard that the Orangemen were having a feast. I and several others went to the same house, and we were all in the seventh heaven of happiness; good food, and served by a handsome hostess and two beautiful daughters. After eating, we joined the Orangemen in the next room, and we spent several hours drinking grog and singing. That was our tenth day out, and that supper was my third meal. Generally our meals consisted in sucking a corner of a blanket; we kept our mouths moist that way, and averted faintness and reeling.
“When going to Hamilton teams were pressed from the farmers, and we were carried seven men and a driver in each. When we got to the mountain the angle and state of the road sent the first sleigh over the precipice, and ours, the second, hung over at right angles; but we managed by hugging the bank and shifting our weight. I looked over and saw the first sleigh on a ledge about one hundred feet below, and as the men were not visible I suppose they were buried in the snow.
“When sitting in the tavern that day I found in my pocket a small apple I had bought near Paris. I took a bite of it and that brought the saliva into my mouth, when, naturally, I fainted as I sat.
“As we marched into Hamilton we had to pass by my door, so I marched out of the ranks and into it. Of my three meals in two weeks, only one was at the expense of the Government.”
“When I was going from Hamilton to Windsor I had to take to sleighing at Chatham, and as we drove down the river, hugging the shore, many large fields of ice floated down the open. We passed three men on one cake, another on a second, and later a fifth, all dead and frozen Yankees, sympathisers. At Windsor I stopped with Mr. Baby, whose house windows were riddled with bullets, and I saw vacant lots broken up and dotted with graves. As an encouragement for me, on my way to Detroit, I was told that the Yankees had threatened to hang the first six Canadians they could catch, to the lamp posts, in return for Colonel Prince’s shooting. When I got my pass from a lieutenant to enable me to cross the river he told me the same thing. I got over and was trying to get my boxes examined by two men who called themselves custom house officers, when I found I had to go off, for peace’ sake, with three others, to report. I guessed what it was about, and made up my mind. They took me to a low tavern filled with unwashed men, and I was left sitting with one of my three while the other two reported on me to an officer. Was I in the ‘war’? Yes. Which side, the patriotic? Yes. Where? Under General Duncombe. How did he make out? Beaten horribly. My questioner had been at Navy Island, and said ‘the British had sent over a —— rocket, which they all looked at while it zigzagged round until it fell plump on the island, where it fizzed away so long that they went to see what was the matter with it, and while they were looking the —— thing burst, and —— if it didn’t kill eight; they didn’t feel any curiosity to examine any of the rest that came.’ I treated this fellow to a drink, unrectified and tasting like sulphuric acid. I didn’t drink mine, so he did. Then I was conducted to the officers’ room, about eighteen gentlemanly looking fellows, apparently American officers, who were deputed to conduct the campaign, so as to give better prospects of success in the conquering and annexing of Canada. They tried to catch me tripping, but I lied manfully; I had no scruples about treating such gentry so. I knew all about what I had seen, and all I had to do was to reverse the position. But my stay in Detroit was short, and I soon returned to work in Canada.
“In our scrimmage with the enemy our captain of cavalry fired his pistol at a rebel, but his horse inopportunely pranced and the bullet ran along the animal’s neck and out at his forehead. He fell, stunned, crushing the captain pretty badly, one of whose hands was permanently injured. He told the story to some one, and that person said, ‘Don’t tell that story again; say the rebels shot your horse, and claim a pension.’ He took his friend’s advice, but I don’t know about the pension. At a review afterwards I saw the same captain on the same horse, and I told the story to the man I was with; we then went up to the captain, and asked him how he got his hand hurt, and he replied that the rebels had shot his horse!
“After our campaign I found I could drink thirteen cups of tea at a meal for several successive meals; but I could not sleep in a bed, or in fact stay long in the house at night at all.” This narrator gives some most unflattering opinions of Colonel MacNab in his generalship in the Duncombe campaign, and many tales of the commissariat department alone seem to bear out his statements from a private’s point of view. He is contemptuous and satirical in describing the methods employed in the Little Scotland affair, “but considering we were about 30 to 1 it did not much matter.”
Another gives a summary of the few casualties at Little Scotland, and, as a death dealer, thinks sauerkraut almost equal to bullets: “A private from Hamilton nearly perished after eating a quart of raw frozen sauerkraut. I was detailed to bring in some prisoners, a cold trip in the snow, and I was fired at from behind an elevation in the road in front of us. We found two of the prisoners covered up in an oat bin in a tannery. Our luggage-train had such a hard time that in one place we had to build a bridge and hold it down with hand-spikes while the train went over. We had no rest and little to eat; no salt at all, and our rations only frozen bread. We would gnaw at it a while and then lay it aside to rest our jaws; but we had to be careful that the hero of the sauerkraut would not make away with it, as he had a hungry maw and a canvas bag. At night we slept in the open, and we wrapped ourselves in Indian blankets—to find them frozen round us. But a fire made of fence rails thawed us and our bread and blankets.”
Occasionally there were volunteers who were not made of the stuff which could be comfortable in a frozen blanket or willing to face a foe. An American, engaged in shipping lumber to Buffalo, with no love for Canadians, had boards added in every possible way about his vessel and covered with all available lanterns and candles. This display sent terror, as he expected, to the hearts of the raw recruits. When ordered to hold themselves in readiness for the advancing foe, one of them approached the captain and declared he was not going, as he had “only listed to stan’ guard.”