menu_book Chapter 3

chapter three of company h by sam r watkins this librivox recording is in the public domain corinth well here we were again reorganizing and after our lax discipline on the road to and from virginia and after a big battle which always disorganizes an army what wonder is it that some men had to be shot merely for discipline's sake and what wonder that general bragg's name became a terror to deserters and evildoers men were shot by scores and no wonder the army had to be reorganized soldiers had enlisted for twelve months only and had faithfully complied with their volunteer obligations the terms for which they had enlisted had expired and they naturally looked upon it that they had a right to go home they had done their duty faithfully and well they wanted to see their families in fact wanted to go home anyhow war had become a reality they were tired of it a law had been passed by the confederate states congress called the conscript act a soldier had no right to volunteer and to choose the branch of service he preferred he was conscripted from this time on till the end of the war a soldier was simply a machine a conscript

was mighty rough on rebels we cursed the war we cursed bragg we cursed the southern confederacy all our pride and valor had gone and we were sick of war and the southern confederacy a law was made by the confederate states congress about this time allowing every person who owned twenty negroes to go home he gave us the blues we wanted twenty negroes negro property suddenly became very valuable and there was raised the howl of rich man's war poor man's fight the glory of the war the glory of the south the glory and pride of our volunteers had no charms for the conscript we were directed to re-elect our officers and the country was surprised to see the sample of a conscript's choice the conscript had no choice he was callous and indifferent whether he had a captain or not those who were at first officers had resigned and gone home because they were officers the poor private a contemptible conscript was left to howl and gnash his teeth the war might as well have ended then and there the boys were hacked nay whipped they were shorn of the locks of their glory they had but one ambition now and that was to get out of the army in some way or other

they wanted to join the cavalry or artillery or home guards or pioneer corps or to be yaller dogs or anything the average staff officer and courier were always called yaller dogs and were regarded as non-combatants and a nuisance and the average private never let one pass without whistling and calling dogs in fact the general had to issue an army order threatening punishment for the ridicule hurled at staff officers and couriers they were looked upon as simply hangers-on or in other words as yellow sheep-killing dogs that if you would say boo at would yelp and get under their master's heels mike snyder was general george manney's yaller dog and i believe here is where joe jefferson and ripran winkle got the name of rip's dog snyder at all times of day or night you could hear whir ya ya heah heah heah heah heah heah snider whoopee hiah whoopee snider s heah heah heah when a staff officer or courier happened to pass the reason of this was that the private knew and felt that there was just that much more loading shooting and fighting for him

and there are the fewest number of instances on record where a staff officer or courier ever fired a gun in their country's cause and even at this late day when i hear an old soldier telling of being on some general's staff i always think of the letter e in fact later in the war i was detailed as special courier and staff officer for general hood which office i held three days but while i held the office in passing a guard i always told them i was on hood's staff and ever afterwards i made those three days staff business last me the balance of the war i could pass any guard in the army by using the magic words staff officer it beat all the countersigns ever invented it was the open sesame of war and discipline their last hope had set they hated war to their minds the south was a great tyrant and the confederacy a fraud they were deserting by thousands they had no love or respect for general bragg

when men were to be shot or whipped the whole army was marched to the horrid scene to see a poor trembling wretch tied to a post and a platoon of twelve men drawn up in line to put him to death and the hushed command of ready aim fire would make the soldier or conscript i should say loathe the very name of southern confederacy and when some miserable wretch was to be whipped and branded for being absent ten days without leave we had to see him kneel down and have his head shaved smooth and slick as a peeled onion and then stripped to the naked skin then a strapping fellow with a big rawhide would make the blood flow and spurt at every lick the wretch begging and howling like a hound and then he was branded with a red-hot iron with a letter d on both hips when he was marched through the army to the music of the rogue's march it was enough none of general bragg's soldiers ever loved him they had no faith in his ability as a general he was looked upon as a merciless tyrant the soldiers were very scantily fed bragg never was a good feeder or commissary general rations with us were always scarce no extra rations were ever allowed to the negroes who were with us as servants no coffee or whiskey or tobacco were ever allowed to be issued to the troops if they obtained these luxuries they were not from the government

these luxuries were withheld in order to crush the very heart and spirit of his troops we were crushed bragg was the great autocrat in the mind of the soldier his word was law he loved to crush the spirit of his men the more of a hang-dog look they had about them the better was general bragg pleased not a single soldier in the whole army ever loved or respected him but he is dead now peace to his ashes we became starved skeletons naked and ragged rebels the chronic diarrhea became the scourge of the army corinth became one vast hospital almost the whole army attended the sick call every morning all the water courses went dry and we used water out of filthy pools halleck was advancing we had to fortify corinth a vast army grant buell halleck sherman all were advancing on corinth our troops were in no condition to fight in fact they had seen enough of this miserable yet tragic farce they were ready to ring down the curtain put out the footlights and go home they loved the union anyhow and were always opposed to this war

but breathed softly the name of bragg it had more terror than the advancing hosts of halleck's army the shot and shell would come tearing through our ranks every now and then a soldier was killed or wounded and we thought what magnificent folly death was welcome halleck's whole army of bluecoats had no terror now when we were drawn up in line of battle a detail of one-tenth of the army was placed in our rear to shoot us down if we ran no pack of hounds under the master's lash or body of penitentiary convicts were ever under greater surveillance we were tenfold worse than slaves our morale was a thing of the past the glory of war and the pride of manhood had been sacrificed upon bragg's tyrannical holocaust but enough of this rowland shot to death one morning i went over to the twenty third tennessee regiment on a visit to captain gray armstrong and colonel jim neal both of whom were glad to see me as we were old ante-bellum friends while at colonel neal's marquis i saw a detail of soldiers bring out a man by the name of rowland whom they were going to shoot to death with musketry by order of a court-martial for desertion

i learned that he had served out the term for which he had originally volunteered had quit our army and joined that of the yankees and was captured with prentiss's yankee brigade at shiloh he was being hauled to the place of execution in a wagon sitting on an old gun-box which was to be his coffin when they got to the grave which had been dug the day before the water had risen in it and a soldier was bailing it out roland spoke up and said please hand me a drink of that water as i want to drink out of my own grave so the boys will talk about it when i am dead and remember roland they handed him the water and he drank all there was in the bucket and handing it back asked them to please hand him a little more as he had heard that water was very scarce in hell and it would be the last he would ever drink he was then carried to the death post and there he began to cut up jack generally he began to curse bragg jeff davis and the southern confederacy and all the rebels at a terrible rate he was simply arrogant and very insulting i felt that he deserved to die

he said he would show the rebels how a union man could die i do not know what alde did say when the shooting detail came up he went of his own accord and knelt down at the post the captain commanding the squad gave the command ready aim fire and roland tumbled over on his side it was the last of roland killing a yankee sharpshooter in our immediate front at corinth mississippi our men were being picked off by sharpshooters and a great many were killed but no one could tell where the shots were coming from in one particular post it was sure of death every detail that had been sent to this post for a week had been killed in distributing the detail this post fell to tom webb and myself they were bringing off a dead boy just as we went on duty colonel george c porter of the sixth tennessee warned us to keep a good lookout we took our stands a mini ball whistled right by my head i don't think it missed me an eighth of an inch tom had sat down on an old chunk of wood and just as he took his seat zip a ball took the chunk of wood

tom picked it up and began laughing at our tight place happening to glance up towards the tree tops i saw smoke rising above a tree and about the same time i saw a yankee peep from behind the tree up among the bushes i quickly called tom's attention to it and pointed out the place we could see his ramrod as he handled it while loading his gun saw him raise his gun as we thought to put a cap on it tom in the meanwhile had lain flat on his belly and placed his gun across the chunk he had been sitting on i had taken a rest for my gun by the side of a sapling and both of us had dead aim at the place where the yankee was finally we saw him sort of peep around the tree and we moved about a little so that he might see us and as we did so the yankee stepped out in full view and bang bang tom and i had both shot we saw that yankee tumble out like a squirrel it sounded like distant thunder when that yankee struck the ground we heard the yankees carry him off one thing i am certain of and that is not another yankee went up that tree that day and colonel george c porter complimented tom and i very highly on our success this is where i first saw a jack-o'-lantern enies

that night while tom and i were on our posts we saw a number of very dim lights which seemed to be in motion at first we took them to be yankees moving about with lights whenever we could get a shot we would blaze away at last one got up very close and passed right between tom and i i don't think i was ever more scared in my life my hair stood on end like the quills of the fretful porcupine i could not imagine what on earth it was i took it to be some hellish machination of a yankee trick i did not know whether to run or stand until i heard tom laugh and say well well that's a jack-o'-lantern colonel field before proceeding further with these memoirs i desired to give short sketches of two personages with whom we were identified and closely associated until the winding up of the ball the first is colonel hume r field colonel field was born a soldier i have read many descriptions of stonewall jackson colonel field was his exact counterpart they looked somewhat alike spoke alike and alike were trained military soldiers the war department at richmond made a grand mistake in not making him a commander of armies he was not a brilliant man could not talk at all he was a soldier his conversation was yea and nay

but when you could get yes sir and no sir out of him his voice was as soft and gentle as a maid's when she says yes to her lover fancy if you please a man about thirty years old a dark skin made swarthy by exposure to sun and rain very black eyes that seemed ablaze with a gentle luster i never saw him the least excited in my life his face was a face of bronze his form was somewhat slender but when you looked at him you saw at the first glance that this would be a dangerous man in a ground scuffle a foot race or a fight there was nothing repulsive or forbidding or even domineering in his looks a child or dog would make up with him on first sight he knew not what fear was or the meaning of the word fear he had no nerves or rather has a rock or tree any nerves you might as well try to shake the nerves of a rock or tree as those of colonel field he was the bravest man i think i ever knew later in the war he was known by every soldier in the army and the first tennessee regiment by his manipulations became the regiment to occupy tight places he knew his men

when he struck the yankee line they felt the blow he had himself set the example and so trained his regiment that all the armies in the world could not whip it they might kill every man in it is true but they would die game to the last man his men all loved him he was no disciplinarian but made his regiment what it was by his own example and every day on the march you would see some poor old ragged rebel riding his fine gray mare and he was walking captain joe p lee the other person i wish to speak of is captain joe p lee captain henry j webster was our regular captain but he was captured while on furlough sent to a northern prison and died there and joe went up by promotion he was quite a young man about twenty-one years old but as brave as any old roman soldier that ever lived joe's face was ever wreathed in smiles and from the beginning to the end he was ever at the head of his company

i do not think that any member of the company ever did call him by his title he was simply called joe lee or more frequently black perch while on duty he was strict and firm but off duty he was one of us boys we all loved him and respected him but everybody knows joe and further comment is unnecessary i merely mention these two persons because in this rapid sketch i may have cause occasionally to mention them and only wish to introduce them to the reader so he may understand more fully my ideas but reader please remember that i am not writing a history at all and do not propose in these memoirs to be anybody's biographer i am only giving my own impressions if other persons think differently from me it is all right and i forgive them corinth forsaken one morning a detail was sent to burn up and destroy all the provisions in army stores and to blow up the arsenal the town was in a blaze of fire and the arsenal was roaring and popping and bellowing like pandemonium turned loose as we all marched through corinth on the morning of the evacuation we bade farewell to corinth its history was black and dark and damning no little speck of green oasis ever enlivened the dark recesses of our memory while at this place it's a desert that lives only in bitter memories

it was but one vast graveyard that entombed the life and spirit of once brave and chivalrous men we left it to the tender mercies of the yankees without one tear of sorrow or regret and bade it farewell forever chapter three