Page:McClure's Magazine v9 n3 to v10 no2.djvu/307

Rh Hardee's and Casey's "Tactics" were well known and carefully studied books. We were all inexperienced, but only a small minority of the thousand men and officers were absolutely ignorant of military drill; moreover, the mass of them were intelligent Americans, who learned quickly and easily. When we left the home camp a few weeks after enrolment, we could march deceptively well, and the regiment actually received praise for its fine appearance from spectators whose frequent opportunities had made them critical. Yet we were sadly defective. To keep step, to march by companies, to execute self-consciously a few motions of the manual of arms, is but the alphabet of tactics. The battalion, not the company, is the tactical unit, and until a regiment has mastered the battalion drill and has learned skirmish work it is unfit for modern warfare. In these essential things we were utterly unpractised.

There is also something else more important than drill. With regularly trained troops perfection of drill is simply the index of discipline. We were, in fact, very imperfect in both. Our discipline was certainly lax, yet even this was not wholly lacking. We were not a crowd of enthusiasts. Even at home we had for a year and a half lived in an atmosphere of war; the breath of battle from afar had reached us; we knew something of what it meant to be soldiers and what we were going into. The spirit of the hour enveloped us, and when we were formally mustered in and, with our right hands raised to heaven, took the oath of service, there was no wild cheering; there was instead a feeling of awe. The soul of the army, the mysterious solidarity of the mighty compelling organization, seemed to take possession of us; we knew that we were no longer our own. Discipline is already half learned when men are thus made ready for it.

Washington was our first destination, We made the journey in freight cars, and on our arrival went into camp under canvas for the first time. It was shortly after the battle of Antietam, and the city was half camp, half hospital. Everywhere one met the monotonous blue uniforms: officers hurrying hither and thither; wounded convalescents, pale and weary, strolling about; sentries and squads of provost guards; occasionally a brigade of dusty and tattered veterans from the front, marching through the streets; and near the railroad stations, trainloads of wounded men who had been brought in from the overcrowded field hospitals, lying on the floors of box cars, the stench of their undressed hurts filling the air. Everywhere the atmosphere of war emptied of its glamour!

The Capital was the sore heart of the nation, and our glimpse of it was a wholesome lesson. It sobered us; it took away all lingering sense of insubordination and taught us the relentless power of the mighty machine of which we had become a part, and into which we knew we must be fitted.

In a few days we were sent to Frederick City, and our army life began in earnest. For more than a week we slept without tents, upon the ground, under the open sky. We also took final leave of railroad transportation. We had to learn the use of our feet and the meaning of the march. After a short stay at Frederick, orders came to proceed to Hagerstown. Western Maryland was at that time strongly held by the Union forces, yet it was not a perfectly secure country. It was subject to raids of the enemy's cavalry, and there was a spice of danger in our march. We proceeded by easy stages; though, unseasoned as we were, the ten or twelve miles a day with our heavy loads seemed long enough; and at night when we made our bivouac we took carefully guarded positions and threw out pickets. Once there was a rumor that Stewart's raiders were in the neighborhood, and our colonel made us a little speech in his bravado style. He told us that we must not load our muskets, "that he greatly preferred the bayonet!" Fortunately, we were unmolested. Everywhere along our march through that beautiful Maryland hill country we saw the marks of war. We crossed the famous South Mountain and a corner of the Antietam battlefield. There were groups of lonely graves by the roadside, and here and there the white tents of lingering field hospitals. On one night we camped near Phil. Kearney's old brigade, one regiment of which had come from our own neighborhood. Some of us went over to their camp to visit friends whom we had not seen since the beginning of the war. We saw the evening dress parade of that choice regiment. They were fresh from the perils and hardships of the campaign; their ranks were sadly thinned, their clothes worn to rags, many