Page:The Immortal Six Hundred.djvu/178

   and one-half pint of acid onion and cucumber pickle, without salt or meat or grease,—save the worms and bugs in the meal,—and this was to sustain life. After picking out the lumps, bugs, and worms in this rotten corn meal there was not more than seven ounces of meal left fit for use. And here I claim Gen. J. G. Foster, by issuing us unsound corn meal, robbed us of what his humane government intended we should have. Some of my comrades say that about the 1st of March, 1865, this corn meal ration was supplemented by four ounces of white bread. This may have been so, but this I do know: that six of us were not in the least benefited by the bread addition. We were locked up in a damp, cold cell in another part of the prison. Why, I will tell further on. Upon the corn-mealpickle ration we lived for sixty-three days, our men suffering the torments of the lost. After we had been a few weeks at Fort Pulaski General Foster ordered that, for sanitary reasons, our number should