Chapter VIII. The Tedium of Camp.
And you, good yeoman,
Whose limbs were made in England, show us here
The mettle of your pasture; let us swear
That you are worth your breeding. --Henry V.
To really enjoy life in a Camp of Instruction requires a peculiar
cast of mind. It requires a genuine liking for a tread-mill round
of merely mechanical duties; it requiers a taste for rising in the
chill and cheerless dawn, at the unwelcome summons of "reveille,"
to a long day filled with a tiresome routine of laborious drills
alternating with tedious roll-calls, and wearisome parades and
inspections; it requires pleased contentment with walks continually
cut short by the camp-guard, and with amusements limited to rough
horse-play on the parade-ground, and dull games of cards by sputtering
candles in the tent.
As these be tastes and preferences notably absent from the mind of
the average young man, our volunteers usually regard their experience
in Camp of Instruction as among the most unpleasant of their war
memories.
These were the trials that tested Harry Glen's resolution sorely.
When he enlisted with the intention of redeeming himself, he
naturally expected that the opportunity he desired would be given
by a prompt march to the field, and a speedy entrance into an
engagement. He nerved himself strenuously for the dredful ordeal of
battle, but this became a continually receding point. The bitter
defeat at Bull Run was bearing fruit in months of painstaking
preparation before venturing upon another collision.
Day by day he saw the chance of retrieving his reputation
apparently more remote. Meanwhile discouragements and annoyances
grew continually more plentiful and irksome. He painfully learned
that the most disagreeable part of war is not the trial of battle,
but the daily sacrifices of personal liberty, tastes, feelings and
conveniences involved in camp-life, and in the reduction of one's
cherished individuality to the dead-level of a passive, obedient,
will-less private soldier.
"I do wish the regiment would get orders to move!" said almost hourly
each one of a half-million impatient youths fretting in Camps of
Instruction through the long Summer of 1861.
"I do wish the regiment would get orders to move!" said Harry Glen
angrily one evening, on coming into the Surgeon's tent to have his
blistered hands dressed. he had been on fatigue duty during the
day, and the Fatigue-Squad had had an obstinate struggle with an
old oak stump, which disfigured the parade-ground, and resisted
removal like an Irish tenant.
"I am willing--yes, I can say I am anxious, even--to go into battle,"
he continued, while Dr. Paul Denslow laid plasters of simple cerate
on the abraded palms, and then swathed them in bandages. "Anything
is preferable to this chopping tough stumps with a dull ax, and
drilling six hours a day while the thermometer hangs around the
nineties."
"I admit that there are things which would seem pleasanter to a young
man of your temperament and previous habits," said the Surgeon,
kindly. "Shift over into that arm-stool, which you will find easier,
and reat a little while. Julius, bring in that box of cigars."
While Julius, who resembled his illustrious namesake as little
in celerity of movement as he did in complexion, was coming, the
Surgeon prepared a paper, which he presented to Harry, saying:
"There, that'll keep you off duty to-morrow. After that, we'll
see what can be done."
Julius arrived with the cigars as tardily as if he had had to cross
a Rubicon in the back room. Two were lighted, and the Surgeon
settled himself for a chat.
"Have you become tired of soldier-life?" asked he, studying Harry's
face for the effect of the question.
"I can not say that I have become tired of it," said Harry, frankly,
"because I must admit that I never had the slightest inclination
to it. I had less fancy for becoming a soldier than for any other
honorable pursuit that you could mention."
"Then you only joined the army--"
"From a sense of duty merely," said Harry, knocking the ashes from
his cigar.
"And the physical and other discomforts now begin to weight nearly
as much as that sense of duty?"
"Not at all. It only seems to me that there are more of them than
are absolutely essential to the performance of that duty. I want
to be of service to the country, but I would prefer that that
service be not made unnecessarily onerous."
"Quite natural; quite natural."
"For example, how have the fatigues and pains of my afternoon's
chopping contributed a particle toward the suppression of the
rebellion? What have my blistered hands to do with the hurts of
actual conflict?"
"Let us admit that the connection is somewhat obscure," said Doctor
Denslow, philosophically.
"It is easier for you, than for me, to view the matter calmly. Your
hands are unhurt. I am the galled jade whose withers are wrung."
"Body and spirit both bruised?" said the Surgeon, half reflectively.
Harry colored. "Yes," he said, rather defiantly. "In addition to
desiring to serve my country, I want to vindicate my manhood from
some aspersions which have been cast upon it."
"Quite a fair showing of motives. Better, perhaps, than usual,
when a careful weighing of the relative proportions of self-esteem,
self-interest and higher impulses is made."
"I am free to say that the discouragements I have met with are very
different, and perhaps much greater than I contemplated. Nor can
I bring myself to belived tha they are necessary. I am trying to
be entirely willing to peril life and limb on the field of battle,
but instead of placing me where I can do this, and allowing me to
concentrate all my energies upon that object, I am kept for months
chafing under the petty tyrannies of a bullying officer, and
deprived of most of the comforts that I have heretofore regarded
as necessary to my existence. What good can be accomplished by
diverting forces which should be devoted to the main struggle into
this ignoble channel? That's what puzzles and irritates me."
"It seems to be one of the inseperable conditions of the higher
forms of achievement that they require vastly more preparation for
them than the labor of doing them."
"That's no doubt very philosophical, but it's not satisfactory,
for all that."
"My dear boy, learn this grand truth now: That philosophy is never
satisfactory; it is only mitigatory. It consists mainly in saying
with many fine words: 'What can't be cured must be endured.'"
"I presume that is so. I wish, though, that by the mere syaing
so, I could make the endurance easier."
"I can make your lot in the service easier."
"Indeed! how so?"
"By having you appointed my Hospital Steward. I have not secured
one yet, and the man who is acting as such is so intemperate that
I feel a fresh sense of escape with every day that passes without
his mistaking the oxalic axid for Epsom salts, to the destruction
of some earnest but constipated young patriot's whole digestive
viscera.
"If you accept this position," continued the Surgeon, flinging away
his refractory cigar in disgust, and rising to get a fresh one,
"you will have the best rank and pay of any non-commissioned officer
in the regiment; better, ineed, than that of a Second Lieutenant.
You will have your quarters here with me, and be compelled
to associate with no one but me, thus reducing your disagreeable
companions at a single stroke, to one. And you will escape finally
from all subserviency to Lieutenant Alspaugh, or indeed to any
other officer in the regiment, except your humble servant. As to
food, you will mess with me."
"Those are certainly very strong inducements," said Harry, meditating
upon the delightfulness of relief from the myriad of rasping little
annoyances which rendered every day of camp-life an infliction.
"Yes, and still farther, you will never need to go under fire, or
expose yourself to danger of any kind, unless you choose to."
Harry's face crimsoned to the hue of the western sky where the sun
was just going down. He started to answer hotly, but an understanding
of the Surgeon's evident kindness and sincerity interposed to deter
him. He knew there was no shaft of sarcasm hidden below this plain
speech, and after a moment's consideration he replied:
"I am very grateful, I assure you, for your kindness in this
matter. I am strongly tempted to accept your offer, bu there are
still stronger reasons why I should decline it."
"May I ask your reasons?"
"My reasons for not accepting the appointment?"
"Yes, the reasons which impel you to prefer a dinner of bitter
herbs, under Mr. Alspaugh's usually soiled thumb, to a stalled ox
and my profitable society," said the Surgeon, gayly.
Harry hesitated a moment, and then decided to speak frankly. "Yes,"
he said, "your kindness gives you the right to know. To not tell
you would show a lack of gratitude. I made a painful blunder before
in not staying unflinchingly with my company. The more I think of
it, the more I regret it, and the more I am decided not to repeat
it, but abide with my comrades and share their fate in all things.
I feel that I no longer have a choice in the matter; I must do it.
But there goes the drum for roll-call. I must go. Good evening,
and very many thanks."
"The young fellow's no callow milksop, after all," said the Surgeon
Denslow, as his eyes followed Harry's retreating form. "His gristle
is hardening into something like his stern old father's backbone."
