Chapter VI: Marching and Camping in the Rain--First Shots at the Enemy

|When the march across Missouri began the weather was fine, and our young 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 the disagreeable experience of marching and camping in the rain. Old soldiers think nothing of rain, though of course they prefer fine weather, but for new campaigners the first rain-storm is a serious affair. So it was with Jack and Harry.

They had provided themselves with waterproof coats, which protected their shoulders, in fact, kept them fairly dry above the knees, but could not prevent the mud from forming on the ground nor protect the feet of the boys as they marched along. It was a weary tramp through the mud, and any one who has traveled in Missouri knows that the mud there is of a very sticky quality; in fact, in most of the western states the soil has a consistency that is unknown in many parts of the east. When dry it is hard, and forms an excellent road, though it is apt to give off a good deal of dust in specially dry and windy times. When there is much traveling over a road, and no rain falls for some time, the dust is a great deal more than perceptible.

But it is in the wet season that the soil of the west puts in its fine work. 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 small it may be; but as continual dropping will wear away stone, so will continual stepping convert the foot into a shapeless mass of mud. Five or ten pounds of mud may thus be gathered upon each foot of a pedestrian, and it does not require a vivid imagination to increase the five pounds to fifty. Horses “ball up” in the same way, and there are many localities where, under certain conditions of weather, this balling up is so rapid, and withal so dangerous, as to make travel next to impossible.

The regiment went into camp that night pretty well tired out, and it is safe to say that some of the soldiers wished themselves home again. But if they did so wish they kept their thoughts to themselves, and each one pretended to his comrades that it was just what he liked.

To pitch tents on wet ground is the reverse of agreeable, and to lie down on the ground and try to sleep there is worse than the mere work of 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 any shelter other than the sky. When our armies took the field in the early part of the war there was a good supply of tents, so that the soldiers were well protected against the weather; but this condition of affairs did not last long. In the early days there was an allowance of two wagons to a company, or twenty wagons to a regiment, without counting the wagons of the field officers and staff. Later on the wagon allowance was greatly reduced, and during the closing campaigns of the war the luxuries of the early days were practically unknown. The army with the smallest wagon-train can make the most rapid progress, as a train is a great hindrance in military movements.

Jack and Harry slept beneath one of the wagons, or rather they tried to sleep, during the steady rain that continued through the night. In the morning Jack thought Harry resembled a butterfly that had been run through a sausage-machine, while the latter retorted that his comrade looked 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 wetter rain was just what he wanted.

“Tell you what, Harry,” said Jack, “it was n't being wet that bothered me so much as getting wet. I found a reasonably dry place, and thought I was all right, but just as I was getting asleep I felt the tiniest little drop of water soaking through on the side I was lying on. I tried to shrivel up so as to get away from it, but the water followed me, and the more I shrunk the more it spread.

“Then I thought it would be better if I turned over, but in turning I let in more water, or rather I suppose I made a hollow in the soft ground, and that was just old pie for the water. When I turned I exposed my neck and got a touch of it there, and so it went on; at every move I got more and more of it. By the end of an hour or so, which seemed all night, I was fairly wet through, and then I did n't care half so much about it. I went to sleep and slept pretty well till morning, and don't believe I've got a bit of a cold.”

“I had about the same sort of a time with the rain,” said Harry, “and agree with you that the worst part of it is the feeling you have while the rain is getting its way through your clothes and you're trying to keep it out; and all the time you know you can't do it, and really might just as well give in at once.”

“Never mind now,” said Jack; “what we want is hot coffee and something to eat.”

They had taken the precaution to lay away some sticks of dry wood in one of the wagons before the rain began, and therefore there was no difficulty in starting a fire. All the wood that lay around the camp was soaked with water, but by careful searching and by equally careful manipulating of the sticks the soldiers and teamsters managed to get up a creditable blaze by using their dry wood to start it with.

Hot coffee all around served to put everybody in good humor, and some hard bread and bacon from the commissary wagons made the solid portion of the breakfast. Harry had secured some slices of cold beef the day before, and these, which he shared with Jack, made a meal fit for a king when added to the regular rations that had been served out. The rain stopped soon after sunrise, the sun came out and in a few hours the roads were dry enough to justify the order to move on. Meantime everybody was busy drying whatever could be dried, and by noon the discomforts of the first night in the rain had been pretty well forgotten.

An hour or two after the column started on the road there was an alarm from the front that threw everybody into a state of excitement. Rumors were passed from man to man, and as they grew with each repetition, they became very formidable by the time they reached the rear-guard. There was a large force of the enemy blocking the way--a whole army, with cannon enough to blow them all out of existence, and possibly to take the offensive and march straight to the capital of Iowa.

Every soldier got his rifle in readiness, the wagons were driven closely up, the rear-guard prepared to meet an assault that might possibly come in their direction, and there was all the “pomp, pride and circumstance of glorious war” with the hand of untried warriors, few of whom had ever smelt gunpowder in a warlike way.

The excitement grew to fever heat when some shots were heard, and evidently indicated the beginning of the battle. Jack and Harry wanted to rush to the front of the column and take a hand in the affair, but they were stopped by the quartermaster, who said they would only be in the way, and had better wait a while until the colonel sent for them. He ended his suggestion with a peremptory order that they should not leave the 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 soldier must obey his officer and each officer must obey the word of his own superior, no matter what it may be. As a consolation to them, and also as an illustration of what they must expect in the army, the quartermaster told a story about a volunteer officer during the Mexican war.

This officer had been ordered to do something that he thought highly injudicious. General Scott was standing near, and Captain X------, as we will 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 an order like that.”

“Always obey your superior officer,” responded the general.

“But suppose my superior officer orders me to jump out of a fourth-story window,” interposed the captain, “must I do it?”

“Certainly,” the general answered; “your superior's duty is to have a feather-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 no knowledge of the ways of military life, but let me assure him that it is nothing of the kind. It is a principle of army discipline that a soldier or officer should unhesitatingly obey the orders he receives without asking for explanations. On the battlefield, regiments, brigades, divisions, are sent as the commander desires for the purposes of carrying out his combinations and plans. It can readily be seen that all discipline would be gone and the combinations and plans could not be carried out if each subordinate commander required an explanation of the reason why he was dispatched in a particular direction or ordered to do a certain thing. Now and then there is an opportunity which an officer embraces for acting on his own hook without orders, but the experienced officer always hesitates lest he lays himself open to censure, and possibly court-martial and punishment, as he surely would if subsequent events showed his action to have been injudicious or disastrous.

The battle turned out to be no battle at all--only a skirmish with some bushwhackers, in which a dozen shots or so were exchanged and nobody was hurt. The advance of the column had come upon a group of men, some mounted and others on foot, near a bend in the road where a small stream was crossed. The sight of the soldiers had disturbed the group; those who had horses rode away as fast as they could go, while the fellows on foot made the best of their way into the bushes, where they sought concealment. They did not obey the order to halt, whereupon a few shots were fired at them, which they returned.

The shots only served to quicken their pace, and in a very short time nothing was to be seen of the fugitives. The quartermaster explained to the youths that the term “bushwhacker” was applied to the men who were straggling about the country with arms in their hands, and did not appear to belong to any regularly-organized body of soldiery.

“Missouri,” said he, “is full of bushwhackers, and there 'll be more of 'em as the war goes on. They 're not to be feared by a regularly-organized force, but can make the roads quite unsafe for ordinary 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. The rebels encourage this sort of fighting, as it will compel us to maintain a large force to keep the roads open as we advance into the south.”