“I'm twenty-one on the muster-roll. I want to serve in the ranks.”
“Can't help it; you'll have to try your hand.”
I reported to the adjutant as directed, and was sent with a half-dozen other recruits to be tested by the chief trumpeter. After a trial of ten minutes the instructor discovered that there was no promise of my development into a bugler, and he said with considerable emphasis:
“You go back mit you to de adjutant and tell him dot you no got one ear for de music.”
I was glad to report back to the company, for I preferred to serve as a private.
The recruits soon became familiar with the sound of the bugle. The first call in the morning was buglers' call—or first call for reveille. The notes would be sounding in the barracks when the first sergeant, all the duty sergeants and the corporals would yell out:
“Turn out for reveille roll-call!”
“Be lively, now—turn out!”
As a result of this shouting by the “non-coms” the boys soon began to pay no attention to the bugle call, but naturally waited till they heard the signal to “turn out” given by the sergeants and corporals. And in a very short time they ceased to hear the bugle when the first call was sounded.
In active service in the Army of the Potomac so familiar with the calls did the soldiers become that when cavalry and infantry were bivouacked together, and the long roll was sounded by the drummers, it would not be heard by the troopers, and when the cavalry buglers blew their calls the foot soldiers would sleep undisturbed. In front of Petersburg troops would sleep soundly within ten feet of a heavy battery that was firing shot and shell into the enemy's works all night. But let one of the guards on the line of breastworks behind which they were “dreaming of home” discharge his musket, and the sleepers would be in line ready for battle almost in the twinkling of an eye. And let the cavalry trumpeter make the least noise on his bugle, and the troopers would hear it at once.