lamentations, which made it most uncomfortable for me, and I rode away.”
Ordinary soldiers couldn’t go on country rides, but they still foundways to take breaks. Pemberton’s men had to stay in the trenches, but the Yankees got time off and played cards, sang, wrote letters to the folks back home or wrote in their journals (provided they could write), cleaned their guns, played baseball, whittled on pieces of wood, swapped stories with tent mates, and carried on camp life. Books were treasured, and at night around a campfire, men who were literate sometimes read aloud to an eager audience. The novels of Charles Dickens were especially popular. The 8th Wisconsin Infantry had a distraction in their pet eagle, nicknamed Old Abe in honor of the president. The young eagle traveled with the men on his own perch. Stories—which may or may not be true—abounded that he also went into battle with them, screeching loudly as he flew above the heads of the enemy.
A game of cards was a popular way to pass time when soldiers weren’t on duty.
Life under the broiling Mississippi sun proved difficult for both sides. Southerners, who were used to the heat and humidity, had some advantage. They also knew how to co-exist with native creatures—unlike one Yankee from Michigan who almost lost his life when he went swimming in theYazoo River and was attacked by an alligator. Rats infested the trenches, and mosquitoes, flies, chiggers, fleas, lice, and lizards bedeviled everybody, especially at night. Officers lucky enough to sleep on cots set the cot legs in jars of water, which kept lizards from climbing into their beds.
The 8th Wisconsin Infantry’s pet eagle, Old Abe, on his perch.
Believing that perspiration was good for the body, nobody questioned soldiers’ wearing wool uniforms, even though they added to the men’s misery. The camps stank. Sanitation, always a problem for an army, was made worse by the oppressive heat. Anyone approaching either army could smell it before they saw it. Horses and mules compounded the problem. Soldiers on both sides suffered all kinds of health maladies. Epidemics of measles and mumps broke out. Malaria, tuberculosis, typhoid fever, and smallpox killed many. Some water sources became contaminated from dead animals, causing yet more sickness.
Where hillsides allowed it, the Union army sometimes carried out its work on two levels, with soldiers topside doing the fighting, while soldiers below rested or attended to other duties.
When the men were in the trenches, they had to stay alert every moment against sudden attack and to keep their heads down so they wouldn’t be spotted by enemy sharpshooters. Sometimes, as a diversion, a soldier would put a hat on a stick and hold it up for the sport of seeing how many enemy bullets would be fired at it. Or soldiers attached mirrors to poles and held them up so they could see into the other side’s trenches, which in some places were only a few yards away.
At night when officers weren’t around, the Rebels and Yanks occasionally visited back and forth or even left their trenches to talk, joke, taunt each other, and share photos of loved ones. A Union soldier later wrote of one of these meetings, “From the remarks of some of the Rebels, I judged that their supply of provisions was getting low, and that they had no source from which to draw more. We gave them from our own rations some fat meat, crackers, coffee, and so forth.”
One day a private from Wisconsin simply said to the Yanks aroundhim that he was going to shake hands with the Rebs. He set down his gun and climbed out of his trench. Before long, several hundred men from both sides were out in the open exchanging news and trading Southern tobacco for Northern coffee. When a Union officer broke up the party, the men returned to their trenches and resumed shooting at each other.
Said one soldier of the enemy, “They agreed with us perfectly on one thing: If the settlement of this war was
Ordinary soldiers couldn’t go on country rides, but they still foundways to take breaks. Pemberton’s men had to stay in the trenches, but the Yankees got time off and played cards, sang, wrote letters to the folks back home or wrote in their journals (provided they could write), cleaned their guns, played baseball, whittled on pieces of wood, swapped stories with tent mates, and carried on camp life. Books were treasured, and at night around a campfire, men who were literate sometimes read aloud to an eager audience. The novels of Charles Dickens were especially popular. The 8th Wisconsin Infantry had a distraction in their pet eagle, nicknamed Old Abe in honor of the president. The young eagle traveled with the men on his own perch. Stories—which may or may not be true—abounded that he also went into battle with them, screeching loudly as he flew above the heads of the enemy.
A game of cards was a popular way to pass time when soldiers weren’t on duty.
Life under the broiling Mississippi sun proved difficult for both sides. Southerners, who were used to the heat and humidity, had some advantage. They also knew how to co-exist with native creatures—unlike one Yankee from Michigan who almost lost his life when he went swimming in theYazoo River and was attacked by an alligator. Rats infested the trenches, and mosquitoes, flies, chiggers, fleas, lice, and lizards bedeviled everybody, especially at night. Officers lucky enough to sleep on cots set the cot legs in jars of water, which kept lizards from climbing into their beds.
The 8th Wisconsin Infantry’s pet eagle, Old Abe, on his perch.
Believing that perspiration was good for the body, nobody questioned soldiers’ wearing wool uniforms, even though they added to the men’s misery. The camps stank. Sanitation, always a problem for an army, was made worse by the oppressive heat. Anyone approaching either army could smell it before they saw it. Horses and mules compounded the problem. Soldiers on both sides suffered all kinds of health maladies. Epidemics of measles and mumps broke out. Malaria, tuberculosis, typhoid fever, and smallpox killed many. Some water sources became contaminated from dead animals, causing yet more sickness.
Where hillsides allowed it, the Union army sometimes carried out its work on two levels, with soldiers topside doing the fighting, while soldiers below rested or attended to other duties.
When the men were in the trenches, they had to stay alert every moment against sudden attack and to keep their heads down so they wouldn’t be spotted by enemy sharpshooters. Sometimes, as a diversion, a soldier would put a hat on a stick and hold it up for the sport of seeing how many enemy bullets would be fired at it. Or soldiers attached mirrors to poles and held them up so they could see into the other side’s trenches, which in some places were only a few yards away.
At night when officers weren’t around, the Rebels and Yanks occasionally visited back and forth or even left their trenches to talk, joke, taunt each other, and share photos of loved ones. A Union soldier later wrote of one of these meetings, “From the remarks of some of the Rebels, I judged that their supply of provisions was getting low, and that they had no source from which to draw more. We gave them from our own rations some fat meat, crackers, coffee, and so forth.”
One day a private from Wisconsin simply said to the Yanks aroundhim that he was going to shake hands with the Rebs. He set down his gun and climbed out of his trench. Before long, several hundred men from both sides were out in the open exchanging news and trading Southern tobacco for Northern coffee. When a Union officer broke up the party, the men returned to their trenches and resumed shooting at each other.
Said one soldier of the enemy, “They agreed with us perfectly on one thing: If the settlement of this war was
Similar Books
