A soldier's life

From a modern middle class viewpoint, it's really amazing what the soldiers in the Civil War went through. For starters, they routinely had to march 10, 15, 20 miles a day dressed in wool uniforms in the heat of a southern summer. Yeech!! No LL Bean or REI boots, either; in fact, at least on the southern side, sometimes the troops had no shoes at all. Food was bad more often than not. They had coffee, sometimes, but it was often lousy; same for booze.

Bathing was an issue. When there was a stream near an encampment and it wasn't too busy, yeah; otherwise no. On cold nights the soldiers often slept in a pattern called spooning, where they laid in a c-shape pressed against one another so their bodies would provide heat to each other. Now the Old Sloat reckons that this would not be bad if his spooning partner was an amiable Sheila sloat who had recently bathed. But if the prospective partner was a crusty Bloke sloat who hadn't touched water in a week, well, no thanks. And no thanks again!

And we haven't even gotten to the combat! Troops on both sides went into battle with no protection whatever; no helmets, no body armor. In many cases they just marched into the other side's guns, hoping enough people would survive to overrun the enemy line. As I mentioned elsewhere, in the 1860s the connection between wounds and infection had not yet been made. Surgeons sawed off mangled limbs without wearing gloves, much less masks. There was chloroform, so the wounded had some anesthetic, but overall medical practices were extremely primitive compared to the present day. What misery! Every time I read about the Civil War, I admire... and pity...the people who fought it.