Sergeant Major William P. Chambers - 46th Mississippi Infantry
Curl the lip in derision if ye will, ye dainty epicures, but I ween ye never tasted a morsel more sweet than "mule meat and peas" was to us! the flesh of the mule seemed of coarser grain, but more tender than that of the ox, and had a decidedly "horsey" flavor. To starving men, however, it was very good. I have strong reason to believe that a dog had been eaten in a Louisiana regiment a long time before any mule beef was issued to us.Private A.C. Brown - 2d Ohio Infantry
Jack Derrer, of Co. D, 2d Ohio, a crack forager, started out on a stroll. He soon came to a graveyard; in getting over the fence he discovered that the ground had recently been disturbed and came to the conclusion it was not a grave. With a piece of a rail he soon resurrected some nice hams.
Sergeant Daniel Eldredge - 3d New Hampshire Infantry
There were many men in the army who would rather pay twenty five cents for a letter than to write it themselves; some because they lack the faculty and others because they were too lazy.Private A. Morris - 2d Ohio Infantry
I presume none of us have forgotten what an important event was the arrival of the mail in camp; how eagerly we gathered about the Captain's tent while the names were being called, and the feeling of pleasure or of disappointment as we received or failed to receive the expected missive from loved ones away up in "God's Country."
Sergeant Henry G. Orr - 12th Texas Cavalry
The boys are cheerful and gay. They have several ways of amusing themselves; the most popular one at present is town ball. Each company has some two or three Indian rubber balls, and they choose about ten or fifteen on each side. Such knocking, running, and shouting you never heard. They also play "Caste," "Cow Pen," running, jumping, etc.Private Charles F. McKenna - 155th Pennsylvania Infantry
We get plenty of exercise now - our company purchased a set of boxing gloves some time ago - and few in the compan ever saw or had such articles on before. It is great fun for all.Private Sidney M. Davis - 6th United States Cavalry
During these days of wild soldiering the men were addicted to playing practical jokes upon each other. There was a mode of dealing with soldiers accustomed to sleep with their mouths open. A long train of paper would be made and laid, with one end in his mouth, and the other off some distance. The end farthest away would then be lighted, and the paper would burn gradually up towards his face, and presently awaken him with its light and heat.Private John D. Billings - 10th Battery, Massachusetts Light Artillery
In some tents vocal or instrumental music was a feature of the evening. The usual medley of comic songs and negro melodies comprised the great part of the entertainment, and, if the space admitted, a jog or clog dance was stepped to on a hard-tack box or other crude platform. Sometimes a real negro was brought in to enliven the occasion by patting and dancing "Juba," or singing his quaint music. They asked nothing better than to be with "Massa Linkum's Sojers." But the men played tricks of all descriptions on them, descending at times to most shameful abuse until someone interfered.
Sergeant Valerius C. Giles - 4th Texas Infantry
A soldier had found an old fiddle in Frederiksburg after the batt;e, brought it to camp and paralyzed a whole battalion. He tried to smuggle his fiddle through and concealed it among the pots, kettles, and frying pans in one of the wagons. But as that poor old fiddle had but one friend in the regiment and five hundred enemies, it was discovered and reported. The owner was ordered to throw it away or carry it. He swore that He would not part with it, and carried it on his back. During the long gloomy nights we spent in that old camp, He would sit for hours at a time and sing and saw, and saw and sing. He could neither sing nor play. He simply had no music in him, and He was the only man in the regiment who did not know it. His favorite songs were "Nellie Gray," "Kittie Wells," and "Lily Dale. We couldn't abate him. The boys would abuse him reason, with him, offer to buy his fiddle, pay him to quit, and threaten to smash the old fiddle into smithereens, but it did no good.
Private Randolph A. Shotwell - 8th Virginia Infantry
It was too dark to distinguish faces, but the spectacle of seven men prone in the straw was so much like a pig-pen that I laughed outright, whereupon one of them recognized me, and amid much cursing of the officers made room for me "spoon-fashion." However, I soon crawled out to sit in the doorway. The night was very hot and sultry--precursor of a thunder-storm, and the odor of seven pairs of unwashed feet filled the interior of the tent with nauseating oppressiveness.
Private Randolph A. Shotwell - 8th Virginia Infantry
Camp-life to one may not always have been pleasant; but to the other it was continual misery. Some men sufered from deprivations, such as books, letters, and intellectual food, which were never once thought of by the majority of their comrades.Private John C. Lang - 100th Illinois Infantry
You were all acquainted with the soldier who was eternally spoiling for a fight, or who breakfasted regularly every day on a certain number of rebels killed by his own hand. You could not fail to know him, for his type was in every company, or at least in every regiment. His own bravery was the one subject of his ceaseless discourse, the one virtue he never tired of praising. How often around the campfire, at the picket post and on the march have you listened to the story of his valiant deeds, as related by himself. You knew he was a brave man and a good soldier, because he said so, but somehow you could never reconcile the fact with the manner in which he "panned out" when under fire.
Private Carlton McCarthy - 2d Company, Richmond Howitzers
An accomplished straggler could assume more misery, look more horribly emaciated, tell more dismal stories of distress, eat more and march further (to the rear), than any ten ordinary men. Most stragglers were real sufferers, but many of them were ingenious liars, energetic foragers, plunder hunters and gormandizers. Thousands who kept their place in ranks to the very end were equally as tired, as sick, as hungry, and as hopeless, as these scamps, but too proud to tell it or use it as a means of escape from hardship.
Private William B. Bevens - 1st Arkansas Infantry
Sometimes a company would buy a barrel of oysters, take it to their hut and open it, and find in the center a five gallon jug of red rye. It was so concealed to pass the provost guard on [the] train. But the boys did even worse. Seven of them from other commands bought a coffin and filled it with jugs. With sad faces and measured steps they carried it solemnly to the train. But the joke was too good to keep. The boys unscrewed the lid and yelled at the guard. Of course, when the train returned no one could name the offenders.
Lieutenant Albert T. Goodloe - 3rd Alabama Infantry
My recollection is that most of the soldiers with whom I was thrown from time to time both chewed and smoked tobacco as a constant habit, whether in camp or on the march.
Lieutenant Bromfield L. Ridley - Staff, Major General Alexander P. Stewart
And now I will while away a few of the hours of armistice by transcribing some of the Nomenclature of our Southern Armies: The North Carolinians are called "Tar Heels;" South Carolinians, "Rice Birds;" Georgians, "Goober Grabbers;" Alabamians, "Yaller Hammers;" Texans, "Cow Boys;" Tennesseans, "Hog Drivers;" Louisianians, "Tigers;" Floridians, "Gophers;" Virginians, "Tobacco Worms;" Arkansians, "Tooth-picks;" Missourians, "Border Ruffians;" Kentuckians, "Corn Crackers;" and Missippians, "Sand Lappers." The Cavalry, "Buttermilk Rangers;" Infantry, "Webfoot." A regiment of deserters from the Federal Army, kept behind by us to build forts, "galvanized Rebs." the Federals called us "Johnnies;" we called them "Yanks" and "Blue Bellies."
Sergeant Valerius C. Giles - 4th Texas Infantry
I came to "Gambler's Paradise." It was an open space containing two or more acres, trampled hard and smooth as a floor. Fly tents and brush arbors dotted the ground in every direction, while hundreds of men were congregated there engaged in every imaginable game of chance known to the confederate soldier, from chuck-a-luck to faro. It was "Paradise Lost" to many a poor devil who blew in the last cent he had and then trudged back to his regiment, busted but no wiser.
Private Randolph A. Shotwell - 8th Virginia Infantry
Fancy the comforts of such a life as this! Roused at dawn to crawl out and stand half-dressed in a drenching storm while the company-roll was being called; then return to damp blankets--or to rub the skin off of your knuckles, trying to start a fire with green pine poles in the storm; go down to the marsh to break the ice off of a shallow branch or rivulet, and flirt a few handfuls of muddy water upon your face, then wipe it off on the clean corner of a dirty pocket handkerchief, borrow a broken piece of comb (having lost your own, and having no money to replace it) and, after raking the bits of trash out of your stubby locks, devote the next hour to trying to boil a dingy tin-cup of so-called coffee; after which, with a chunk of boiled beef, or broiled bacon (red, most, with rust and skippers) and a piece of cornbread, you are ready to breakfast. But now you have blackened your hands, and are begrimed with the sooty smoke from the snapping, popping, sappy, green pine logs, your eyes are red and smarting, your face burned while your back is drenched and chilled; and you have no place to sit while eating your rough meal.Private Thomas G. Odell - 78th Illinois Infantry
You want to know how we make our coffee. We cook out doors altogether as yet, we have a small ditch, or trench, in the ground, the sides of which are fixed up with rock, and a little chimney for the smoke to pass through. We put water in a tin boiler (which holds about as much as our wooden bucket). We make the fire first, then put on the pot and when it boils we put the coffee in & let it boil five or ten minutes. George (the darkey who cooks for our mess), puts some coffee in a sheet iron pan, which holds about two gallons, sets it on the ground, takes a gun and pounds it till it is fine enough for use.Corporal George H. Cadman - 39th Ohio Infantry
Some of our boys are not over and above clean and if not pretty sharply looked after would not wash themselves from weeks end to weeks end. There are two brothers who are especially dirty and if they are left alone for a few days they get such a coat of dirt upon their faces it is impossible to tell one from the other. They would be eaten alive by vermin if it were not for their messmates cursing them.
Private Randolph A. Shotwell - 8th Virginia Infantry
The rush huts, or "shelters," (made by leaning long saplings, or poles against a tree, or resting them upon a transverse pole between two trees, and covering the poles with boughs, leaves, etc.) had been occupied for months by all kinds of men, including of course, many dirty, slovenly fellows, careless of cleanliness, and dropping vermin wherever they went, to say nothing of where they stretched their dirty blankets. Hence these outpost bivouacs became literally swarming with the hateful insects, and even the greatest care seemed inadequate to prevent their getting a lodgment somewhere in one's clothes or blankets. And once "entrenched" in the seam of a garment, there is no dislodging them as even two hours boiling in hot water merely makes them more vigorous and lively. To escape this "plague of Egypt". I could not conquer my intense abhorrence of the pestiferous pests -- the "Greybacks."Private John D. Billings - 10th Battery, Massachusetts Light Artillery
The secretiveness which a man suddenly developed when he found himself inhabited for the first tie was very entertaining. He would cuddle all knowledge of it as closely as the old Forty-Niners die the hiding-place of their bag of gold-dust. Perhaps he would find only one of the vermin. This he would secretly murder, keeping all knowledge of it from his tent-mates, while he nourished the hope that it was the Robinson Crusoe of its race cast away on a strange shore with none of its kind at hand to cheer its loneliness. Alas, vain delusion! In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred this solitary pediculus would prove to be the advance guard of generations yet to come. . . .Private William Bircher - 2d Minnesota Veteran Volunteer Infantry
After we had been in the field a year or two the call, "Fall in for your hard-tack!" was leisurely responded to by only about a dozen men, -- lean, sinewy, hungry-looking fellows, each with his haversack in hand. They would squat around a gum blanket, spread on the ground, on which was a small heap of sugar, another of coffee, another of rice, maybe, which the corporal was dealing out by successive spoonfuls. They held open their little black bags to receive their portion, while near by lay a small piece of pork or beef, or possibly a small amount of desiccated vegetables. I also observed that hard-tack was very hard. This I attributed to its great age, for there was a common belief among the boys that our hard-tack had been baked long before the beginning of the Christian era. This opinion was based upon the fact that the letters "B.C." were stamped on many, if not, indeed, all the cracker-boxesPrivate William Bircher - 2d Minnesota Veteran Volunteer Infantry
When, as was generally the case on a march, our hard-tack was broken into small pieces in our haversacks, we soaked these in water and fried them in pork fat, stirring well and seasoning with salt and pepper, thus making what was commonly called a "hell-fired stew."