CHAPTER VI. MARCHING AND CAMPING IN THE RAIN--FIRST SHOTS AT THE ENEMY.
|When the march across Missouri began the weather was fine, and ouryoung friends, as before stated, were delighted with campaigning life;but the fair weather did n’t last.
When they were on the road again, after the affair of the rebel flag,they found a change of situation. A storm arose, and they had thedisagreeable experience of marching and camping in the rain. Oldsoldiers think nothing of rain, though of course they prefer fineweather, but for new campaigners the first rain-storm is a seriousaffair. So it was with Jack and Harry.
They had provided themselves with waterproof coats, which protectedtheir shoulders, in fact, kept them fairly dry above the knees, butcould not prevent the mud from forming on the ground nor protect thefeet of the boys as they marched along. It was a weary tramp through themud, and any one who has traveled in Missouri knows that the mud thereis of a very sticky quality; in fact, in most of the western states thesoil has a consistency that is unknown in many parts of the east. Whendry it is hard, and forms an excellent road, though it is apt to giveoff a good deal of dust in specially dry and windy times. When there ismuch traveling over a road, and no rain falls for some time, the dust isa great deal more than perceptible.
But it is in the wet season that the soil of the west puts in its finework. The mud has the stickiness of glue with the solidity of putty.Each time the foot goes down it picks up a small quantity, very smallit may be; but as continual dropping will wear away stone, so willcontinual stepping convert the foot into a shapeless mass of mud.Five or ten pounds of mud may thus be gathered upon each foot of apedestrian, and it does not require a vivid imagination to increase thefive pounds to fifty. Horses “ball up” in the same way, and there aremany localities where, under certain conditions of weather, this ballingup is so rapid, and withal so dangerous, as to make travel next toimpossible.
The regiment went into camp that night pretty well tired out, and it issafe to say that some of the soldiers wished themselves home again. Butif they did so wish they kept their thoughts to themselves, and each onepretended to his comrades that it was just what he liked.
To pitch tents on wet ground is the reverse of agreeable, and to liedown on the ground and try to sleep there is worse than the mere workof putting a tent in place. But both of these things must be done,except where there is no tent to pitch and one must sleep without anyshelter other than the sky. When our armies took the field in the earlypart of the war there was a good supply of tents, so that the soldierswere well protected against the weather; but this condition of affairsdid not last long. In the early days there was an allowance of twowagons to a company, or twenty wagons to a regiment, without countingthe wagons of the field officers and staff. Later on the wagon allowancewas greatly reduced, and during the closing campaigns of the war theluxuries of the early days were practically unknown. The army with thesmallest wagon-train can make the most rapid progress, as a train is agreat hindrance in military movements.
Jack and Harry slept beneath one of the wagons, or rather they tried tosleep, during the steady rain that continued through the night. Inthe morning Jack thought Harry resembled a butterfly that had been runthrough a sausage-machine, while the latter retorted that his comradelooked as if he had been fished out of a millpond and hung up to dry.Both were a good deal bedraggled and limp, but they would not admit it,and each danced about as though a little more and a great deal wetterrain was just what he wanted.
“Tell you what, Harry,” said Jack, “it was n’t being wet that botheredme so much as getting wet. I found a reasonably dry place, and thoughtI was all right, but just as I was getting asleep I felt the tiniestlittle drop of water soaking through on the side I was lying on. I triedto shrivel up so as to get away from it, but the water followed me, andthe more I shrunk the more it spread.
“Then I thought it would be better if I turned over, but in turningI let in more water, or rather I suppose I made a hollow in the softground, and that was just old pie for the water. When I turned I exposedmy neck and got a touch of it there, and so it went on; at every move Igot more and more of it. By the end of an hour or so, which seemed allnight, I was fairly wet through, and then I did n’t care half so muchabout it. I went to sleep and slept pretty well till morning, and don’tbelieve I’ve got a bit of a cold.”
“I had about the same sort of a time with the rain,” said Harry, “andagree with you that the worst part of it is the feeling you have whilethe rain is getting its way through your clothes and you’re trying tokeep it out; and all the time you know you can’t do it, and really mightjust as well give in at once.”
“Never mind now,” said Jack; “what we want is hot coffee and somethingto eat.”
They had taken the precaution to lay away some sticks of dry wood inone of the wagons before the rain began, and therefore there was nodifficulty in starting a fire. All the wood that lay around the campwas soaked with water, but by careful searching and by equally carefulmanipulating of the sticks the soldiers and teamsters managed to get upa creditable blaze by using their dry wood to start it with.
Hot coffee all around served to put everybody in good humor, and somehard bread and bacon from the commissary wagons made the solid portionof the breakfast. Harry had secured some slices of cold beef the daybefore, and these, which he shared with Jack, made a meal fit for a kingwhen added to the regular rations that had been served out. The rainstopped soon after sunrise, the sun came out and in a few hoursthe roads were dry enough to justify the order to move on. Meantimeeverybody was busy drying whatever could be dried, and by noon thediscomforts of the first night in the rain had been pretty wellforgotten.
An hour or two after the column started on the road there was an alarmfrom the front that threw everybody into a state of excitement. Rumorswere passed from man to man, and as they grew with each repetition, theybecame very formidable by the time they reached the rear-guard. Therewas a large force of the enemy blocking the way--a whole army, withcannon enough to blow them all out of existence, and possibly to takethe offensive and march straight to the capital of Iowa.
Every soldier got his rifle in readiness, the wagons were driven closelyup, the rear-guard prepared to meet an assault that might possibly comein their direction, and there was all the “pomp, pride and circumstanceof glorious war” with the hand of untried warriors, few of whom had eversmelt gunpowder in a warlike way.
The excitement grew to fever heat when some shots were heard, andevidently indicated the beginning of the battle. Jack and Harry wantedto rush to the front of the column and take a hand in the affair, butthey were stopped by the quartermaster, who said they would only be inthe way, and had better wait a while until the colonel sent for them. Heended his suggestion with a peremptory order that they should not leavethe wagons without permission.
This was a disappointment, but they bore it as patiently as they could.They were learning the lesson of military life, that the soldiermust obey his officer and each officer must obey the word of his ownsuperior, no matter what it may be. As a consolation to them, andalso as an illustration of what they must expect in the army, thequartermaster told a story about a volunteer officer during the Mexicanwar.
This officer had been ordered to do something that he thought highlyinjudicious. General Scott was standing near, and Captain X------, as wewill call him, appealed to the general to know what he should do.
“Obey the order,” was the brief answer of the general.
“But it’s absurd,” replied the captain. “Certainly no one should obey anorder like that.”
“Always obey your superior officer,” responded the general.
“But suppose my superior officer orders me to jump out of a fourth-storywindow,” interposed the captain, “must I do it?”
“Certainly,” the general answered; “your superior’s duty is to have afeather-bed there to receive you, and you can be sure he ‘ll have it.That’s a part of his business you have nothing to
do with.”
This may sound like exaggeration to the young reader who has noknowledge of the ways of military life, but let me assure him that it isnothing of the kind. It is a principle of army discipline that a soldieror officer should unhesitatingly obey the orders he receives withoutasking for explanations. On the battlefield, regiments, brigades,divisions, are sent as the commander desires for the purposes ofcarrying out his combinations and plans. It can readily be seen thatall discipline would be gone and the combinations and plans could not becarried out if each subordinate commander required an explanation of thereason why he was dispatched in a particular direction or ordered to doa certain thing. Now and then there is an opportunity which an officerembraces for acting on his own hook without orders, but the experiencedofficer always hesitates lest he lays himself open to censure, andpossibly court-martial and punishment, as he surely would if subsequentevents showed his action to have been injudicious or disastrous.
The battle turned out to be no battle at all--only a skirmish with somebushwhackers, in which a dozen shots or so were exchanged and nobodywas hurt. The advance of the column had come upon a group of men, somemounted and others on foot, near a bend in the road where a small streamwas crossed. The sight of the soldiers had disturbed the group; thosewho had horses rode away as fast as they could go, while the fellowson foot made the best of their way into the bushes, where they soughtconcealment. They did not obey the order to halt, whereupon a few shotswere fired at them, which they returned.
The shots only served to quicken their pace, and in a very short timenothing was to be seen of the fugitives. The quartermaster explained tothe youths that the term “bushwhacker” was applied to the men who werestraggling about the country with arms in their hands, and did notappear to belong to any regularly-organized body of soldiery.
“Missouri,” said he, “is full of bushwhackers, and there ‘ll be moreof ‘em as the war goes on. They ‘re not to be feared by aregularly-organized force, but can make the roads quite unsafe forordinary travel. The trouble is, a man may be a peaceful farmer one day,a bushwhacker the next, and a peaceful farmer again on the third. Therebels encourage this sort of fighting, as it will compel us to maintaina large force to keep the roads open as we advance into the south.”