A Stillness at Appomattox (101 page)

In
the
24th
Michigan,
which
now
had
fewer
than
100 men,
there
was
one
company
with
a
total
strength
of
two-one
sergeant
and
one
private—and
on
drill
or
parade
a
man remembered
that
"it
afforded
amusement
to
witness
the
evolutions
of
this
little
company."
A
man
in
the
12th
New Hampshire
said
that
his
regiment
had
been
under
fire
every day,
and
every
night
but
one,
over
a
period
of
seventy-two days,
and
a
headquarters
clerk
in
the
V
Corps
wrote
the
age-old
complaint
of
the
soldier:
"How
often
the
words
cruel war'
are
uttered,
and
how
glibly
people
beyond
the
reach
of its
influence
talk
of
the
misery
caused
by
it
.
.
.
but
not
one-thousandth
part
of
the
real
misery
is
even
guessed
at
by
those who
are
not
eyewitnesses
of
its
horrors."
²⁴

Many
men
who
had
not
been
hit
became
unfit
for
service simply
because
they
were
worn
out.
Colonel
Dawes
of
the 6th
Wisconsin,
appointed
to
a
board
to
pass
on
officers'
qualifications,
recalled
numerous
cases
of
self-inflicted
wounds. He
remembered
one
captain
whose
fertile
imagination
led him
to
drink
"a
decoction
of
powdered
slate
pencils
in
vinegar"
in
order
to
unfit
himself
for
further
duty,
and
he
reported
sadly
that
"the
excitement,
exhaustion,
hard
work
and loss
of
sleep
broke
down
great
numbers
of
men
who
had
received
no
wounds
in
battle."
Some
men,
he
said,
who
had been
noted
for
their
bravery
and
leadership
when
the
campaign
began,
became
timorous,
unstable,
and
all
but
useless toward
the
end
of
it.
For
a
time
the
150th
Pennsylvania contained
a
unique
detachment
known
as
"Company
Q," made
up
of
line
officers
from
other
regiments
who
had
been court-martialed
and
broken
for
cowardice
but
who
were given
the
chance
to
serve
as
private
soldiers
and,
if
they could,
redeem
themselves.
Company
Q
turned
out
to
be
a good
fighting
unit,
and
most
of
the
men
in
it
ultimately
regained
their
commissions.
²⁵

Even
the
chaplains
seemed
to
be
showing
the
strain,
and many
of
them
quietly
gravitated
toward
safe
jobs
far
behind the
lines.
("Undue
susceptibility
to
cannon
fever,"
a
New England
soldier
complained,
"ought
to
be
regarded
as
a
disqualification.")
A
surgeon
in
the
39th
Illinois,
on
duty
at
a base
hospital
at
Fortress
Monroe,
felt
that
the
chaplains
there were
"pharisees
who
made
it
a
business
to
pray
aloud
in public
places
.
.
.
rotten
to
the
core,
not
caring
half
as
much for
their
souls'
welfare
or
anybody
else's
as
for
the
dollars they
received."
One
chaplain
ruined
morale
in
his
ward
by coming
in
half
a
dozen
times
a
day,
sitting
on
the
edge
of some
soldier's
cot,
and
telling
the
man
he
looked
bad
and must
prepare
to
die;
a
patient
threw
a
plate
at
him
one
day and
told
him
to
go
to
the
devil.
The
doctor
added
stoutly that
he
himself
had
"stood
beside
hundreds
of
soldiers
when dying
from
disease
or
wounds,
and
he
has
never
yet
seen one
manifest
the
least
fear
of
death."
²⁶

In
the
2nd
Connecticut
Heavy
Artillery
it
was
said
that the
chaplain
got
into
a
poker
game
one
night
and
cleaned out
an
entire
company,
coming
into
regimental
headquarters later
to
show
a
fat
roll
of
bills
and
say,
"There
is
my
forenoon's
work."
An
officer
remembered
seeing
some
dignified clergymen
of
the
Christian
Commission
moving
up
toward the
front,
carpetbags
in
hand.
They
passed
some
soldiers, one
of
whom
called
out:
"Hullo!
Got
any
lemons
to
sell?" Gravely,
one
of
the
frock-coated
contingent
replied:
"No,
my friend,
we
belong
to
the
army
of
the
Lord."
And
from
a
blue-uniformed
officer
there
came
back:
"Oh
yes—stragglers!
stragglers!"
²
*

As
usual,
there
were
complaints
that
not
all
of
the
goods sent
down
for
Christian
and
Sanitary
Commission
workers to
distribute
to
the
soldiers
ever
actually
reached
the
men for
whom
they
were
intended.
A
soldier
detailed
as
hospital orderly
said
that
grafters
and
scroungers
got
most
of
these delicacies:
"The
articles
to
be
distributed
are
first
turned over
to
the
surgeon
in
charge,
he
keeping
out
enough
for himself
and
assistants,
then
the
cooks
take
out
enough
for themselves
and
friends.
The
balance,
should
there
be
a
balance,
goes
to
the
soldiers.
I
know
the
above
to
be
true
from personal
observation."
²⁸