THE MANY AND QUEER USES TO WHICH IT WAS AT LAST PUT.
[Illustration: THE DIVERSE USES OF THE GOOD OLD CANTEEN 029 ]
WHEN Josiah (called "Si" for short) Klegg, of the 200th Ind., drew his
canteen from the Quartermaster at Louisville, he did not have a very
high idea of its present or prospective importance. In the 22 hot
Summers that he had lived through he had never found himself very far
from a well or spring when his thirst cried out to be slacked, and he
did not suppose that it was much farther between wells down South.
"I don't see the use of carrying two or three pints o' water along all
day right past springs and over cricks," he remarked to his chum, as the
two were examining the queer, cloth-covered cans.
"We've got to take 'em, any way," answered his chum, resignedly, "It's
regulations."
On his entry into service a boy accepted everything without question
when assured that it was "regulations." He would have charged bayonets
on a buzz-saw if authoritatively informed that it was required by the
mysterious "regulations."
The long march the 200th Ind. made after Bragg over the dusty turnpikes
the first week in October, 1862, taught Si the value of a canteen. After
that it was rarely allowed to get empty.
"What are these grooves along each side for?" he asked, pointing out the
little hollows which give the "prod" lightness and strength.
"Why," answered the Orderly, who, having been in the three-months'
service, assumed to know more about war than the Duke of Wellington,
"the intention of those is to make a wound the lips of which will close
up when the bayonet is pulled out, so that the man'll be certain to
die."
Naturally so diabolical an intention sent cold shivers down Si's back.
The night before Si left for "the front" he had taken his musket and
couterments home to show them to his mother and sisters--and the other
fellow's sister, whose picture and lock of hair he had safely stowed
away. They looked upon the bayonet with a dreadful awe. Tears came into
Maria's eyes as she thought of Si roaming about through the South like a
bandit plunging that cruel steel into people's bowels.
"This is the way it's done," said Si, as he charged about the room in an
imaginary duel with a rebel, winding up with a terrifying lunge. "Die,
Tur-r-rraitor, gaul durn ye," he exclaimed, for he was really getting
excited over the matter, while the girls screamed and jumped upon the
chairs, and his good mother almost fainted.
The attention that the 200th Ind. had to give to the bayonet drill
confirmed Si's deep respect for the weapon, and he practiced assiduously
all the "lunges," "parries," and "guards" in the Manual, in the hope
that proficiency so gained would save his own dearly-beloved hide from
puncture, and enable him to punch any luckless rebel that he might
encounter as full of holes as a fishing net.
[Illustration: WHAT THE BAYONET WAS GOOD FOR 033 ]
The 200th Ind.'s first fight was at Perryville, but though it routed the
rebel force in front of it, it would have taken a bayonet half-a-mile
long to touch the nearest "Johnny." Si thought it odd that the rebels
didn't let him get close enough to them to try his new bayonet, and
pitch a dozen or two of them over into the next field.
If the truth must be told, the first blood that stained Si's bayonet was
not that of a fellow-man.
Si Klegg's company was on picket one day, while Gen. Buell was trying to
make up his mind what to do with Bragg. Rations had been a little short
for a week or so. In fact, they had been scarcely sufficient to meet the
demands of Si's appetite, and his haversack had nothing in it to speak
of. Strict orders against foraging had been, issued. It was the day of
"guarding rebel onion patches." Si couldn't quite get it straight in his
head why the General should be so mighty particular about a few pigs and
chickens and sweet potatoes, for he was really getting hungry, and
when a man is in this condition he is not in a fit mood to grapple with
fine-spun theories of governmental policy.
So when a fat pig came wabbling and grunting toward his post, it was to
Si like a vision of manna to the children of Israel in the wilderness.
A wild, uncontrollable desire to taste a fresh spare-rib took possession
of him. Naturally, his first idea was to send a bullet through the
animal, but on second thought he saw that wouldn't do at all. It would
"give him away" at once, and, besides, he had found that a single shot
on the picket-line would keep Buell's entire army in line-of-battle for
a whole day.
Si wrote to his mother that his bright new bayonet was stained with
Southern blood, and the old lady shuddered at the awful thought. "But,"
added Si, "it was only a pig, and not a man, that I killed!"
"I'm so glad!" she exclaimed.
[Illustration: AS MARIA PICTURED SI USING HIS BAYONET 034 ]
By the time Si had been in the service a year there was less zeal in the
enforcement of orders of this kind, and Si had become a very skillful
and successful forager. He had still been unable to reach with his
bayonet the body of a single one of his misguided fellow citizens,
but he had stabbed a great many pigs and sheep. In fact, Si found his
bayonet a most useful auxiliary in his predatory operations. He could
not well have gotten along without it.
Uncle Sam generally furnished Si with plenty of coffee--roasted and
unground--but did not supply him with a coffee mill. Si thought at first
that the Government had forgotten something. He saw that several of the
old veterans of '61 had coffee mills, but he found on inquiry that they
had been obtained by confiscation only. He determined to supply himself
at the first opportunity, but in the meantime he was obliged to 'use his
bayonet as a substitute, just as all the rest of the soldiers did.
We regret to say that Si, having thrown away his "Baxter's Call to the
Unconverted" in his first march, and having allowed himself to forget
the lessons he had learned but a few years before in Sunday-school, soon
learned to play poker and other sinful games. These, at night, developed
another use for the bayonet. In its capacity as a "handy" candlestick it
was "equaled by few and excelled by none." The "shank" was always ready
to receive the candle, while the point could be thrust into the ground
in an instant, and nothing more was necessary. This was perhaps the
most general sphere of usefulness found by the bayonet during the war.
Barrels of candle-grease flowed down the furrowed sides of this weapon
for every drop of human blood that dimmed its luster.