CHAPTER
XXIII
ON
THE MARCH
We were soon ordered to be ready to move. Knapsacks were hastily packed and all the
minor details preparatory to a day’s
march were gone through within which time the cook had the coffee “going” and
we refreshed ourselves with the soldier’s solace, a steaming cup of coffee
black as the imp of darkness and strong enough to bear a pontoon train.
From the number of orderlies who were galloping hither
and yon, aided by the booming of the far-off gun, the sound of which reached us
at regular intervals caused us to think that something was to be did.
We fell in promptly at the word of the command, glad
to escape from the intolerable smoke and the abominable pine thicket.
During the night W. S. Keller had met with an
accident, having slept too close to the fire, he had the one side of the tail
of his “long-tailed blue” badly damaged and in order to retrieve the misfortune
Freddy Knight had cut it out bias, giving the wearer the appearance of a
rooster with his wing cut off.
When the boys beheld his comical appearance they made
the welkin ring with shouts, which Keller good naturedly played along with.
During the day’s march, we were impressed with the
apparent poverty of the people. The
houses in most cases consisted of little log huts, while the outbuildings were
in strict accordance with the main buildings, the only feature of any
prominence about them, were the large old fashioned stone chimneys, which
covered up the entire gable end of the house, the spacious hearth and
fire-place, having a corresponding space upon the inside.
The citizens had the appearance of abject want stamped
upon every liniment of their faces, the men, as a general thing, their hair
long and unkempt, while beards looked as though they had never felt the keen
edge of a razor and their garments in many cases betokened the scarcity of soap
and water.
The ladies we saw, but we presume that the better
class either fled or concealed themselves upon the advance of the Yankees,
were indeed a sorry excuse for the former noble women of the old Dominion, they
were tall, raw-boned and saffron colored, their lips were tinted with the color
of tobacco instead of the hue of the rose, whilst their dilated nostrils
proclaimed the victims of snuff.
Another characteristic was the fact that they prided
themselves upon being simon-pure Virginians, boasting that they never had done
any work until the “Yanks had gone and commenced a war, jist to steal their
slaves, but they reckoned that the Yanks would be glad to toat thar propety
back agin when the whar was over and the Confederacy was all right.”
The women in most case, were the most defiant rebels,
and it afforded them the greatest satisfaction to tell how many of their sons
and brothers, husbands, fathers and friends had gone to war, to fight for their
country and the “bonnie blue flag.’
About three miles from Fairfax
we passed one of these Southron Mansions with the owner sitting on a bench on
the porch, when the following colloquy, illustrative of similar events
transpiring daily, took voice.
Soldier—“How far to the next town, old man?”
Old Man—“A right smart chance of a walk.”
Soldier—“Never mind the walk, old man, can’t you tell
us how many miles it is?”
Old Man—“I reckon its nigh unto 12 miles.”
Soldier—“I guess they are Virginia
miles.”
Old Man— “Yaas, its 12 right smart miles.”
The foregoing is about all that could be gotten out of
any of them, and we were frequently informed that it was ten or twelve miles to
a certain point when a few minutes afterwards we would meet another native who
would give quite different figures, sometimes much nearer and at other times
much farther off. Thus, we were at all
time surrounded by uncertainties.
Our march during the day lay through a section of
country in which large numbers of persimmon trees grew, and as we were the
first troops that had passed them since they were fit to eat, we made a
terrible onslaught upon them and whenever we halted near them, in a few seconds
the trees would be covered with “blue coats” and in a very short time they
would be as completely scutched as the potato-bugs of late years have cleaned
the Murphy stalks.
It was upon this march that an original idea worked
its way into Kevic Ulrich’s cranium. We
were marching along quietly when the Corporal astonished the whole Company
with. the following:
“Hu, Hu, I have often wondered why they say still,
‘Cinnamon seed and sandy bottom,’” referring to the song of Dixie then very
popular in both armies “and now I know it,” he continued, “for just see the
cinnamons.”
The latter part called forth a hearty cheer and
Lieutenant Byers capped the climax by remarking:
“Just listen to that darned fool, who every heard of
the like?”
When Freddy remembered that the fruit was
“per-cinnamons” the couplet in the song remained just as much of a mystery to
him as it had before he made the discovery.
During he entire day we could plainly hear the booming
of cannons, and heard a battle was in progress, but as to where, or the
magnitude of it, we were profoundly ignorant.
Our rations were almost exhausted and had it not been
for the beef we captured at Gum Springs, together with the persimmons we got
along the road, we would indeed have fared badly.
It was mid-winter, and in a section of country where
the climate is but a few degrees less severe than in central Pennsylvania,
whilst many of the boys, owing to the severity of the previous day’s march, had
slung blankets or overcoats away, and we who were not fully initiated into the
hardships of a soldier’s life, found the situation a very unpleasant one, but
the boys took it like veterans, and when several of them began to find fault,
they were speedily stopped by the “little one” who started up one of the old
Harrisburg Gaiety songs entitled, “Oh Why did I go for a Soldier?”
The marching was very irksome, it being one of those
slow kind composed mainly of “starts”
and “halts.” By the time the men
would get seated to rest, the command to “forward” would again be given..
We made camp at sundown, having marched from Fairfax to Occoquan, a distance of about 14 miles.
The campfires soon burnt brightly and after we
swallowed a cup of coffee and dispatched a cracker or two, we soon forgot the
mishaps of the day, and felt perfectly resigned to our fate.
Before we closed our eyes in sleep, stretched out upon
old mother earth, with the canopy of heaven, thickly studded with the myriads
of twinkling stars, for our covering, listening to the booming of a number of
heavy guns in the distant front—how far we knew not, we mused upon the
uncertainties of “glorious (?) war,”
vainly endeavoring to rend the veil of futurity and to catch a glimpse of the
future life beyond the narrow confines of the known. As we gazed upon the heavenly wonders in
silence and awe, we were impressed with one thought, that never deserted us in
the years we spent in service and was this, that the Hand that shaped the
heavenly bodies, and called the laws which govern them into existence, also is
able to extend the same protecting care over us poor mortals, who in our
blindness and folly, rush madly and hurriedly into danger, and that those who
fall in the contest, like a meteor flashing through the heavens will not be
destroyed, but only be transferred to another constellation.
Cogitating thus, we closed our tired eyes in slumber
and did not wake up until the morning dawned, and we were aroused by Dasher and
the drum corps beating revile.
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