John Buncombe Crowder entered the army in 1863 as a 38-year-old conscript,
and as a good family man had proved successful; but it was hardly expected
that a man of his age should enter enthusiastically into the strenuous
life of a soldier in times of great stress. However, John was inclined to
hold up his end and made a faithful record. But the long, cold winter of
1865 in the trenches in front of Petersburg tired out his patience and he
got powerful hungry. He stood six feet three inches and his fighting
weight was 205 pounds. When we surrendered together, on the 25th of March,
1865, in front of Petersburg, Buncombe thought it good policy to make
friends with his captors, in the hope of getting more and better rations;
so he said, "Yes, I've quit fighting you. I've been wanting to quit for
some time, and I shore am glad you've got me, for I am nearly starved to
death." Loss Bridges, the little man with the hot-gun, said, "He's lying
to you, and at the same time showing a chunk of cornbread." The Yankees
said, "All right, Johnnie, you've got where there's plenty now, and you
shall have plenty to eat." B.: "Now I believe that I just know you'll
treat me right." Y.: "Ah, Johnnie, bet your life we will." B.: "I've
always thought you were clever fellows, and now I know it. I never did
want to fight you nohow." Y.: "Bully for you, Johnnie; you shall be taken
good care of." The men on the firing line who captured him would have done
what they said; but prisoners are soon turned over to the bomb-proof
brigade--coffee coolers and grafters--the kind of men who would get rich
keeping the county poor-house. John Buncombe made a hard effort to get to
the flesh pots and coffee cans of Yankeedom, but failed. He went up to
Washington with the deserter volunteers, and was sent back to Point
Lookout to starve with the rest of us. After he had been in a few days we
asked him how he liked the fare, and he replied, "Very well; I don't have
anything to do, and it don't take much to do me." A few days more and he
got so hungry he could hold his peace no longer and began to abuse the
Yankees as the greatest liars and the meanest people in all the world, and
he just wished he had held on to his gun and killed a few more of them
anyhow. He had offered to go North and work for something to eat, and they
would not let him, and were just holding to starve him to death for pure
meanness. He said when he was at home it took a good-sized hen to make
him a meal, and now we get nothing scarcely but bread, and he could eat
four days' rations--two loaves or three pounds at one meal. So he raged
and lectured as a champion eater until two men who had a little money got
up a fifty-cent bet on him. He was to eat two loaves, or three pounds of
bread, in thirty minutes. A crowd gathered and much interest was
manifested in the contest, and the eating began. In the excitement he took
too much water. In ten minutes the first loaf disappeared and three
canteens, or nine pints of water, with it. Then he said he did not have
quite enough, but did not feel like he could eat all of the other loaf, so
they need not cut it; that his stomach had shrunk up until he could not
eat as much as he thought he could. After that he could no longer command
a hearing, as his record as a champion eater was all he had to stand on.
He is now--1907--living happily with his third wife and has plenty to eat,
but says his appetite is not quite as good as it used to be.