HOUSE AND CLOTHES--EFFORTS TO ERECT A SUITABLE RESIDENCE--DIFFICULTIES
ATTENDING THIS--VARIETIES OF FLORENTINE ARCHITECTURE--WAITING FOR DEAD
MEN’S CLOTHES--CRAVING FOR TOBACCO.
We were put into the old squads to fill the places of those who had
recently died, being assigned to these vacancies according to the
initials of our surnames, the same rolls being used that we had signed
as paroles. This separated Andrews and me, for the “A’s” were taken to
fill up the first hundreds of the First Thousand, while the “M’s,” to
which I belonged, went into the next Thousand.
I was put into the Second Hundred of the Second Thousand, and its
Sergeant dying shortly after, I was given his place, and commanded the
hundred, drew its rations, made out its rolls, and looked out for its
sick during the rest of our stay there.
Andrews and I got together again, and began fixing up what little we
could to protect ourselves against the weather. Cold as this was we
decided that it was safer to endure it and risk frost-biting every
night than to build one of the mud-walled and mud-covered holes that
so many, lived in. These were much warmer than lying out on the frozen
ground, but we believed that they were very unhealthy, and that no one
lived long who inhabited them.
So we set about repairing our faithful old blanket--now full of great
holes. We watched the dead men to get pieces of cloth from their
garments to make patches, which we sewed on with yarn raveled from
other fragments of woolen cloth. Some of our company, whom we found in
the prison, donated us the three sticks necessary to make tent-poles
--wonderful generosity when the preciousness of firewood is remembered.
We hoisted our blanket upon these; built a wall of mud bricks at one
end, and in it a little fireplace to economize our scanty fuel to the
last degree, and were once more at home, and much better off than most
of our neighbors.
One of these, the proprietor of a hole in the ground covered with an
arch of adobe bricks, had absolutely no bed-clothes except a couple of
short pieces of board--and very little other clothing. He dug a trench
in the bottom of what was by courtesy called his tent, sufficiently
large to contain his body below his neck. At nightfall he would crawl
into this, put his two bits of board so that they joined over his
breast, and then say: “Now, boys, cover me over;” whereupon his friends
would cover him up with dry sand from the sides of his domicile, in
which he would slumber quietly till morning, when he would rise, shake
the sand from his garments, and declare that he felt as well refreshed
as if he had slept on a spring mattress.
There has been much talk of earth baths of late years in scientific
and medical circles. I have been sorry that our Florence comrade if he
still lives--did not contribute the results of his experience.
The pinching cold cured me of my repugnance to wearing dead men’s
clothes, or rather it made my nakedness so painful that I was glad
to cover it as best I could, and I began foraging among the corpses
for garments. For awhile my efforts to set myself up in the mortuary
second-hand clothing business were not all successful. I found that
dying men with good clothes were as carefully watched over by sets
of fellows who constituted themselves their residuary legatees as if
they were men of fortune dying in the midst of a circle of expectant
nephews and nieces. Before one was fairly cold his clothes would be
appropriated and divided, and I have seen many sharp fights between
contesting claimants.
I soon perceived that my best chance was to get up very early in the
morning, and do my hunting. The nights were so cold that many could
not sleep, and they would walk up and down the streets, trying to keep
warm by exercise. Towards morning, becoming exhausted, they would lie
down on the ground almost anywhere, and die. I have frequently seen so
many as fifty of these. My first “find” of any importance was a young
Pennsylvania Zouave, who was lying dead near the bridge that crossed
the Creek. His clothes were all badly worn, except his baggy, dark
trousers, which were nearly new. I removed these, scraped out from each
of the dozens of great folds in the legs about a half pint of lice,
and drew the garments over my own half-frozen limbs, the first real
covering those members had had for four or five months. The pantaloons
only came down about half-way between my knees and feet, but still
they were wonderfully comfortable to what I had been--or rather not
been--wearing. I had picked up a pair of boot bottoms, which answered
me for shoes, and now I began a hunt for socks. This took several
morning expeditions, but on one of them I was rewarded with finding a
corpse with a good brown one --army make--and a few days later I got
another, a good, thick genuine one, knit at home, of blue yarn, by some
patient, careful housewife. Almost the next morning I had the good
fortune to find a dead man with a warm, whole, infantry dress-coat, a
most serviceable garment. As I still had for a shirt the blouse Andrews
had given me at Millen, I now considered my wardrobe complete, and left
the rest of the clothes to those who were more needy than I.
Those who used tobacco seemed to suffer more from a deprivation of
the weed than from lack of food. There were no sacrifices they would
not make to obtain it, and it was no uncommon thing for boys to trade
off half their rations for a chew of “navy plug.” As long as one had
anything--especially buttons--to trade, tobacco could be procured from
the guards, who were plentifully supplied with it. When means of barter
were gone, chewers frequently became so desperate as to beg the guards
to throw them a bit of the precious nicotine. Shortly after our arrival
at Florence, a prisoner on the East Side approached one of the Reserves
with the request:
“Say, Guard, can’t you give a fellow a chew of tobacco?”
To which the guard replied:
“Yes; come right across the line there and I’ll drop you down a bit.”
The unsuspecting prisoner stepped across the Dead Line, and the
guard--a boy of sixteen--raised his gun and killed him.
At the North Side of the prison, the path down to the Creek lay right
along side of the Dead Line, which was a mere furrow in the ground.
At night the guards, in their zeal to kill somebody, were very likely
to imagine that any one going along the path for water was across the
Dead Line, and fire upon him. It was as bad as going upon the skirmish
line to go for water after nightfall. Yet every night a group of boys
would be found standing at the head of the path crying out:
“Fill your buckets for a chew of tobacco.”
That is, they were willing to take all the risk of running that
gauntlet for this moderate compensation.