A Boy Trooper With Sheridan. Allen Stanton P.
can’t find a rig that will come nearer fitting you than this outfit.”
I was glad to obey orders, and after the captain’s compliments had been presented to the quartermaster, directions were given to supply me with a uniform that would fit. Although the order could not be literally complied with, I profited by the exchange, and the second outfit was made to do after it had been altered somewhat by a tailor, and the sleeves of the jacket and the legs of the trousers had been shortened.
The captain did not “jump on us” as we had expected. ‘The self-styled old soldiers had warned us that we would be sent to the guard house. The captain had seen service at the front, and had been through the mill as a recruit when the First Battalion was organized. He knew that it was not the fault of the privates that their clothes did not fit them. This fact seemed to escape the attention of many commissioned officers, and not a few recruits were censured in the presence of their comrades by thoughtless captains, because the boys had not been built to fill out jackets and trousers that had been made by basting together pieces of cloth cut on the bias and every other style, but without any regard to shapes, sizes or patterns.
CHAPTER III
The Buglers’ Drill – Getting Used to the Calls – No Ear for Music – A Visitor from Home – A Basket full of Goodies – Taking Tintypes – A Special Artist at the Battle of Bull Run – Horses for the Troopers – Reviewed by a War Governor – Leaving Camp Meigs – A Mother’s Prayers – The Emancipation Proclamation – The War Governors’ Address.
SHOULD there be living to-day a survivor of Sheridan’s Cavalry Corps of the Army of the Potomac who can, without shuddering, recall the buglers’ drill, his probationary period on earth must be rapidly drawing to a close. I do not mean the regular bugle calls of camp or those sounded on company or battalion parade. I refer to the babel of bugle blasts kept up by the recruit “musicians” from the sounding of the first call for reveille till taps. A majority of the boys enlisted as buglers could not at first make a noise – not even a little toot – on their instruments, but when, under the instruction of a veteran bugler, they had mastered the art of filling their horns and producing sound they made up for lost time with a vengeance. And what a chorus! Reveille, stable call, breakfast call, sick call, drill call retreat, tattoo, taps – all the calls, or what the little fellows could do at them, were sounded at one time with agonizing effect.
The first sergeant of Company I said to me one day while we were in Camp Meigs:
“The adjutant wants more buglers, and he spoke of you as being one of the light weights suitable for the job. You may go and report to the adjutant.”
“I didn’t enlist to be a bugler; I’m a full-fledged soldier.”
“But you’re young enough to bugle.”
“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.
A few weeks before our battalion left Camp Meigs for the front Mrs. E. L. Waterman of Berlin, mother of Irving Waterman, paid us a visit. She brought with her a basket full of goodies. Home-made pies, bread, butter, cheese, cookies and fried cakes were included in the supplies. She took up her quarters at the picture gallery of Mr. Holmes, the camp photographer, and we went to see her as often as our duties would permit. She brought us socks knit by our friends at home, and many articles for our comfort. About the first thing she said was: “My boys, what do they give you to eat?”
“Bread and meat and beans and coffee,” we answered.
“No butter?”
“No.”
“I thought not. I had heard the soldiers had to eat their bread without butter, with nothing but coffee to wash it down, so I brought you a few pounds of butter.”
And the dear woman remained at the gallery, and Irving and I would drop over and eat the good things she fixed for us. If we had taken our commissary stores to the barracks they would have been stolen.
Mrs. Waterman asked Irving and myself to have our pictures taken. Neither of us had ever been photographed or tintyped, but we took kindly to the idea. We sat together, and the picture, a tintype, was pronounced an excellent likeness. What a trying performance it was, though! We were all braced up with an iron rest back of the head, and told to “look about there – you can wink, but don’t move.” Of course the tintype presented the subject as one appears when looking into a mirror. The right hand was the left, and our buttons were on the wrong side in the picture. But Mrs. Waterman declared the tintype to be “as near like them as two peas,” and we accepted her verdict. The dear old lady has kept that picture all these years.
The soldier boys resorted to all sorts of expedients to “beat the machine.” That is, to so arrange their arms and accoutrements that when the tintype was taken it would not be upside down or wrong end to. To this end the saber-belt would be put on wrong side up so that the scabbard would hang on the right side – that would bring it on the left side, where it belonged in the picture. I tried that plan one day and then stood at “parade rest,” with the saber in front of me. I put back my left foot instead of my right to stand in that position, and when the picture was presented, I congratulated myself that I had made a big hit. But when I showed it to an old soldier in the company he humiliated me by the remark:
“It’s all very fine for a recruit, but a soldier wouldn’t hold his saber with his left hand and put his right hand over it at parade rest.”
Sure enough. I had changed my feet to make them appear all right, but had forgotten the hands. But recruits were not supposed to know everything on the start.
We had photographs taken as well as tintypes. But the art of photography has greatly improved since the war. Most of the photographs of that day that I have seen of late are badly faded, and it is next to impossible to have a good copy made. Not so with the tintypes. They remain unfaded, and excellent photographic copies can be secured. In many a home to-day hang the pictures of the soldier boy, some of them life-sized portraits copied from the tintypes taken in the days of the war.
I know homes where the gray-haired mothers still cling to the little tintype picture – the only likeness they have of a darling boy who was offered as a sacrifice for liberty. How tenderly the picture