APRIL--LONGING TO GET OUT--THE DEATH RATE--THE PLAGUE OF LICE --THE
SO-CALLED HOSPITAL.
April brought sunny skies and balmy weather. Existence became much
more tolerable. With freedom it would have been enjoyable, even had we
been no better fed, clothed and sheltered. But imprisonment had never
seemed so hard to bear--even in the first few weeks--as now. It was
easier to submit to confinement to a limited area, when cold and rain
were aiding hunger to benumb the faculties and chill the energies than
it was now, when Nature was rousing her slumbering forces to activity,
and earth, and air and sky were filled with stimulus to man to imitate
her example. The yearning to be up and doing something-to turn these
golden hours to good account for self and country--pressed into heart
and brain as the vivifying sap pressed into tree-duct and plant cell,
awaking all vegetation to energetic life.
To be compelled, at such a time, to lie around in vacuous idleness
--to spend days that should be crowded full of action in a monotonous,
objectless routine of hunting lice, gathering at roll-call, and drawing
and cooking our scanty rations, was torturing.
But to many of our number the aspirations for freedom were not, as
with us, the desire for a wider, manlier field of action, so much as
an intense longing to get where care and comforts would arrest their
swift progress to the shadowy hereafter. The cruel rains had sapped
away their stamina, and they could not recover it with the meager and
innutritious diet of coarse meal, and an occasional scrap of salt meat.
Quick consumption, bronchitis, pneumonia, low fever and diarrhea seized
upon these ready victims for their ravages, and bore them off at the
rate of nearly a score a day.
It now became a part of, the day’s regular routine to take a walk past
the gates in the morning, inspect and count the dead, and see if any
friends were among them. Clothes having by this time become a very
important consideration with the prisoners, it was the custom of the
mess in which a man died to remove from his person all garments that
were of any account, and so many bodies were carried out nearly naked.
The hands were crossed upon the breast, the big toes tied together with
a bit of string, and a slip of paper containing the man’s name, rank,
company and regiment was pinned on the breast of his shirt.
The appearance of the dead was indescribably ghastly. The unclosed eyes
shone with a stony glitter--
An orphan’s curse would drag to hell
A spirit from on high:
But, O, more terrible than that,
Is the curse in a dead man’s eye.
The lips and nostrils were distorted with pain and hunger, the sallow,
dirt-grimed skin drawn tensely over the facial bones, and the whole
framed with the long, lank, matted hair and beard. Millions of lice
swarmed over the wasted limbs and ridged ribs. These verminous pests
had become so numerous--owing to our lack of changes of clothing, and
of facilities for boiling what we had--that the most a healthy man
could do was to keep the number feeding upon his person down to a
reasonable limit--say a few tablespoonfuls. When a man became so sick
as to be unable to help himself, the parasites speedily increased into
millions, or, to speak more comprehensively, into pints and quarts. It
did not even seem exaggeration when some one declared that he had seen
a dead man with more than a gallon of lice on him.
There is no doubt that the irritation from the biting of these myriads
materially the days of those who died.
Where a sick man had friends or comrades, of course part of their duty,
in taking care of him, was to “louse” his clothing. One of the most
effectual ways of doing this was to turn the garments wrong side out
and hold the seams as close to the fire as possible, without burning
the cloth. In a short time the lice would swell up and burst open,
like pop-corn. This method was a favorite one for another reason than
its efficacy: it gave one a keener sense of revenge upon his rascally
little tormentors than he could get in any other way.
As the weather grew warmer and the number in the prison increased, the
lice became more unendurable. They even filled the hot sand under our
feet, and voracious troops would climb up on one like streams of ants
swarming up a tree. We began to have a full comprehension of the third
plague with which the Lord visited the Egyptians:
And the Lord said unto Moses, Say unto Aaron, Stretch out thy rod,
and smite the dust of the land, that it may become lice through all
the land of Egypt.
And they did so; for Aaron stretched out his hand with his rod, and
smote the dust of the earth, and it became lice in man and in beast;
all the dust of the land became lice throughout all the land of
Egypt.
The total number of deaths in April, according to the official report,
was five hundred and seventy-six, or an average of over nineteen a day.
There was an average of five thousand prisoner’s in the pen during
all but the last few days of the month, when the number was increased
by the arrival of the captured garrison of Plymouth. This would make
the loss over eleven per cent., and so worse than decimation. At that
rate we should all have died in about eight months. We could have gone
through a sharp campaign lasting those thirty days and not lost so
great a proportion of our forces. The British had about as many men as
were in the Stockade at the battle of New Orleans, yet their loss in
killed fell much short of the deaths in the pen in April.
A makeshift of a hospital was established in the northeastern corner of
the Stockade. A portion of the ground was divided from the rest of the
prison by a railing, a few tent flies were stretched, and in these the
long leaves of the pine were made into apologies for beds of about the
goodness of the straw on which a Northern farmer beds his stock. The
sick taken there were no better off than if they had staid with their
comrades.
What they needed to bring about their recovery was clean clothing,
nutritious food, shelter and freedom from the tortures of the lice.
They obtained none of these. Save a few decoctions of roots, there were
no medicines; the sick were fed the same coarse corn meal that brought
about the malignant dysentery from which they all suffered; they wore
and slept in the same vermin-infested clothes, and there could be but
one result: the official records show that seventy-six per cent. of
those taken to the hospitals died there.
The establishment of the hospital was specially unfortunate for my
little squad. The ground required for it compelled a general reduction
of the space we all occupied. We had to tear down our huts and move.
By this time the materials had become so dry that we could not rebuild
with them, as the pine tufts fell to pieces. This reduced the tent
and bedding material of our party--now numbering five--to a cavalry
overcoat and a blanket. We scooped a hole a foot deep in the sand and
stuck our tent-poles around it. By day we spread our blanket over the
poles for a tent. At night we lay down upon the overcoat and covered
ourselves with the blanket. It required considerable stretching to make
it go over five; the two out side fellows used to get very chilly, and
squeeze the three inside ones until they felt no thicker than a wafer.
But it had to do, and we took turns sleeping on the outside. In the
course of a few weeks three of my chums died and left myself and B. B.
Andrews (now Dr. Andrews, of Astoria, Ill.) sole heirs to and occupants
of, the overcoat and blanket.