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How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion, a fiction by George W. Peck |
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Chapter 14 |
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_ CHAPTER XIV Military Attire--My Suit of Government Clothes--The Memory of Them Saddens Me Still--The Dreadful March--The Adjutant Appoints Me to Make Out a Monthly Report--The Report Is an Astonishing One. About this time I received the greatest shock of the whole war. I had prided myself upon my uniform that I brought from home, which was made by a tailor, and fit me first rate. It was of as good cloth and as well made as the uniforms of any of the officers, and I was not ashamed to go out with a party of officers on a little evening tear, because there was nothing about my uniform to distinguish me from an officer, except the shoulder-straps, and many officers did not wear shoulder-straps at all, except on dress parade or inspection. I took great pleasure in riding around town, wherever the regiment was located, looking wise, and posing as an officer. But the time came when my uniform, which came with me as a recruit, became seedy, and badly worn, and it was necessary to discard it, and draw some clothing of the quartermaster. That is a trying time for a recruit. One day it was announced that the quartermaster sergeant had received a quantity of clothing, and the men were ordered to go and draw coats, pants, hats, shoes, overcoats, and underclothing, as winter was coming on, and the regiment was liable to move at any time. Something happened that I was unable to be present the first forenoon that clothing was issued, and, when I did call upon the quartermaster-sergeant, there was only two or three suits left, and they had been tumbled over till they looked bad. I can remember now how my heart sank within me, as I picked up a pair of pants that was left. They were evidently cut out with a buzz-saw, and were made for a man that weighed three hundred. I held them up in installments, and looked at them. Holding them by the top, as high as I could, and the bottom of the legs of the pants laid on the ground. The sergeant charged the pants to my account, and then handed me a jacket, a small one, evidently made for a hump-backed dwarf. The jacket was covered with yellow braid. O, so yellow, that it made me sick. The jacket was charged to me, also. Then he handed me some undershirts and drawers, so coarse and rough that it seemed to me they must have been made of rope, and lined with sand-paper. Then came an overcoat, big enough for an equestrian statue of George Washington, with a cape on it as big as a wall tent. The hat I drew was a stiff, cheap, shoddy hat, as high as a tin camp kettle, which was to take the place of my nobby, soft felt hat that I had paid five dollars of my bounty money for. The hat was four sizes too large for me. Then I took the last pair of army shoes there was, and they weighed as much as a pair of anvils, and had raw-hide strings to fasten them with. Has any old soldier of the army ever forgotten the clothing that he drew from the quartermaster? These inverted pots for hats, the same size all the way up, and the shoes that seemed to be made of sole leather, and which scraped the skin off the ankles. O, if this government ever does go to Gehenna, as some people contend it will, sometime, it will be as a penalty for issuing such ill-fitting shoddy clothing to its brave soldiers, who never did the government any harm. I carried the lot of clothing to my tent, feeling sick and faint. The idea of wearing them among folks was almost more than I could bear to think of. I laid them on my bunk, and looked at them, and "died right there." That hat was of a style older than Methuselah. O, I could have stood it, all but the hat, and pants, and shoes, but they killed me. While I was looking at the lay-out, and trying to make myself believe that my old clothes that I brought with me were good enough to last till the war was over, though the seat of the pants, and the knees, and the sleeves of the coat were nearly gone, an orderly came through the company and said the regiment would have a dismounted dress parade at sundown, and every man must wear his new clothes. Ye gods! that was too much! If I could have had a week or ten days to get used to those new clothes, one article at a time, I could have stood it, but to be compelled to put the pants, and jacket, shoes and hat on all at once, was horrible to think of, and if I had not known that a deserter was always caught, and punished, I would have deserted. But the clothes must be put on, and I must go out into the world a spectacle to behold. Believing that it is better to face the worst, and have it over, I put on the pants first. If I could ever meet the army contractor who furnished those pants to a government almost in the throes of dissolution, I would kill him as I would an enemy of the human race. There was room enough in those pants for a man and a horse. Yes, and a bale of hay. There were no suspenders furnished to the men, and how to keep the pants from falling from grace was a question, but I got a piece of tent rope, cut a hole in the waist band, and run the rope around inside, and tied it around my waist, puckering the top of the pants at proper intervals. When I think of those pants now, after twenty-two years, I wonder that I was not irretrievably lost in them. I would have been lost if I had not stuck out of the top. But when I looked at the bottoms of the pants I found at least a foot too much. If I had tied the rope around under my arms, or buttoned them to my collar button, they would have been too long at the bottom. I finally rolled them up at the bottom, and they rolled clear up above my knees. But how they did bag around my body. There was cloth enough to spare to have made a whole uniform for the largest man in the regiment. At that time I was a slim fellow, that weighed less than 125 pounds, and there is no doubt I got the largest pair of pants that was issued in the whole Union army. I only had a-small round mirror in my tent, so I could not see how awfully I looked, only in installments, but to a sensitive young man who had always dressed well, any one can see how a pair of such pants would harrow up his soul. If the pants were too large, you ought to have seen the jacket. The contractor who made the clothes evidently took the measure of a monkey to make that jacket. It was so small that I could hardly get it on. The sleeves were so tight that the vaccination marks on my arm must have shown plainly. The sleeves were too short, and my hands and half of my forearm riding outside. The body was so tight that I had to use a monkey-wrench to button it, and then I couldn't breathe without unbuttoning one button. It was so tight that my ribs showed so plain they could be counted. I stuffed some pieces of grain sack in the shoes, and got them on, and tied them, put on that awful hat, the bugle sounded to fall in, and I fell out of my tent towards the place of assembly, with my carbine. If we had been going out mounted, I could have managed to hide some of the pants around the saddle, if I could have got my shoe over the horse's back, but to walk out among men, stubbing my shoes against each other, and interfering and knocking my ankles off, was pretty hard. The company was about formed when I fell out of my tent, and when the men saw me they snickered right out. I have heard a great many noises in my time that took the life out of me. The first shell that I heard whistle through the air, and shriek, and explode, caused my hair to raise, and I was cold all up and down my spine. The first flock of minnie bullets that sang about my vicinity caused my flesh to creep and my heart's blood to stand still. Once I was near a saw mill when the boiler exploded, and as the pieces of boiler began to rain around me, I felt how weak and insignificant a small, red-headed, freckled-faced man is. Once I heard a girl say "no," when I had asked her a civil question, and I was so pale and weak that I could hardly reply that I didn't care a continental whether she married me or not, but I never felt quite so weak, and powerless, and ashamed, and desperate as I did when I came out, falling over myself and the men of my company snickered at my appearance. The captain held his hand over his face and laughed. I fell in at the left of my company, and the captain went to the right and looked down the line, and seeing my pants out in front about a foot, he ordered me to stand back. I stood back, and he looked at the rear of the line, and I stuck out worse behind, and he made me move up. Finally he came down to where I was and told me to throw out my chest. I tried to throw it out, and busted a button off, but the pressure was too great, and my chest went back. Finally the captain told me I could go to the right of the company and act as orderly sergeant on dress parade. He said as our company was on the right of the regiment, they could dress on my pants, and I wouldn't be noticed. What I ought to have done, was to have committed suicide right there, but I went to the right, trying to look innocent, and we moved off to the field for dress parade. Everything went on well enough, except that in coming to a "carry arms," with my carbine, from a present, the muzzle of the carbine knocked off my stiff hat, and the stock of the carbine went into the pocket of my pants and run clear down my leg, before I could rescue it. A file closer behind me picked up my hat and put it on me, with the yellow cord tassels in front, and before I could fix it, the order came, "First sergeants to the front and center, march." Those who are familiar with military matters, know that at dress parade the first sergeants march a few paces to the front, then turn and march to the center of the regiment, turn and face the adjutant, and each salutes that officer in turn, and reports, "Co. ----, all present or accounted for." That was the hardest march I ever had in all of my army experience. I knew that every eye of every soldier in the six companies at the right of the regiment, would be on my pants, and the officers would laugh at me, and the several hundred ladies and gentlemen from town, who were back of the colonel, witnessing the dress parade, would laugh, too. A man can face death, in the discharge of his duty, better than he can face the laughter of a thousand people. I seemed to be the only soldier in the whole regiment who had not got a pretty good fit in drawing his new clothes, but I was a spectacle. As I marched to the front, with the other eleven first sergeants, and stood still for them to dress on me, I felt as though the piece of tent rope with which I had fastened my large pants up, was becoming untied, and I began to perspire. What would become of me if that rope _should_ become untied? If that rope gave way, it seemed to me it would break up the whole army, stampede the visitors, and cause me to be court-martialed for conduct unbecoming any white man. I made up my mind if the worst came, I would drop my carbine and grab the pants with both hands, and save the day. At the command, right and left face, I turned to the left, and I could feel the pants begin to droop, as it were, so I took hold of the top of them with my left hand, and at the command, march, I started for the center. I had got almost past my own company, and there had been no general laugh, but when I passed an Irishman, named Mulcahy, I heard him whisper out loud to the man next to him, "Howly Jasus, luk at the pants." Then there was a snicker all through the company, which was taken up by the next, and by the time I got to the center, and "front faced," a half of the regiment were laughing, and the officers were scolding the men and whispering to them to shut up. Just then I felt that the one hand that was trying to hold the pants up, was never going to do the work in the world, so I dropped my carbine behind me, said, "Co. E, all present or accounted for," and stood there like a stoughton bottle, holding the waist-band of those pants with both hands, as pale as a ghost. I could see that the adjutant and the colonel and two majors, were laughing, and many of the visitors were trying to keep from laughing. I think I lived seventy years in five minutes, while the other eleven orderlies were reporting, and when the order came to return to our posts, I whispered to the next orderly to me, and told him if he would pick up my carbine and bring it along, I would die for him, and he picked it up. The dress parade was soon finished, but instead of marching the companies back to their quarters, they were ordered to break ranks on the parade ground, and for an hour I was surrounded with officers and men, who laughed at me till I thought I would die. The colonel and adjutant finally told me that it was a put up job on me, to make a little fun for the boys. They said I had often had fun at the expense of the other boys, and they wanted to see if I could stand a joke on myself, and they admitted that I had done it well. If I had known it was a joke, I could have lived through it better. The adjutant said he had got a little work for me that evening, and the next morning I could take my clothes down town to the post quartermaster, and exchange them for a suit that would fit me. I went to his tent, and he showed me a lot of company reports, and wanted me to make out a consolidated monthly report, for the assistant adjutant general of the brigade. I had done some work for him before, and he left a blank signed by himself and colonel, and told me to make out a report and send it to the brigade headquarters, as he was going down town with a party of officers. I made up my mind that I would get even with the adjutant and the colonel, so I took a pen and filled out the blank. My idea was to put all the figures in the wrong column, which I did, and send it to the brigade headquarters. The next morning I went down town with the quartermaster, and got a suit of clothes to fit me, and on the way back to camp I passed brigade headquarters, when I saw our adjutant looking quite dejected. He called to me and said he had been summoned to brigade headquarters to explain some inaccuracies in the monthly report sent in the night before, and he wanted me to stay and see what was the trouble, but I acted as though if there was a mistake, it was an error of the head rather than of the feet. Pretty soon the old brigade adjutant, who was a strict diciplinarian, and a man who never heard of a joke, came in from the general's tent, with his brow corrugated. They had evidently been brooding over the report. "I beg your pardon, adjutant," said he, with a preoccupied look, "but in your report I observe that your regiment contains forty-three enlisted men, and nine hundred and twenty-six company cooks. This seems to me improbable, and the general cannot seem to understand it." The adjutant turned red in the face, and was about to stammer out something, when the adjutant general continued: "Again, we observe that your quartermaster has on hand nine hundred bales of condition powders, which is placed in your report as rations for the men, that you only have eleven horses in your regiment fit for duty, that you have the same number of men, while the commissioned officers foot up at nine hundred and twenty-six. Of your sick men there seems to be plenty, some eight hundred, which would indicate an epidemic, of which these headquarters had not been informed previously. In the column headed "officers detailed on other duty" I find four "six-mule teams," and one "spike team of five mules." In the column "officers absent without leave" I find the entry "all gone off on a drunk." This, sir, is the most incongruous report that has ever been received at these head-quarters, from a reputably sober officer. Can this affair be satisfactorily explained, at once, or would you prefer to explain it to a court-martial?" "Captain," said the adjutant in distress, and perspiring freely, "my clerk has made a mistake, and placed a piece of waste paper that has been scribbled on, in the envelope, instead of the regular report. Let me take it, and I will send the proper report to you in ten minutes." The adjutant general handed over my report, after asking how it happened that the signature of the colonel and adjutant was on the ridiculous report, and the adjutant and the red-headed recruit went out, mounted and rode away. On the way the adjutant said, "I ought to kill you on the spot. But I wont. You have only retaliated on us for playing them pants on you. I hate a man that can't take a joke." Then we made out a new report, and I took it to headquarters, and all was well. But the adjutant was not as kitteny with his jokes on the other fellows for many moons. _ |
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