Soldier's Heart by Gary Paulsen

Author:Gary Paulsen
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780307804242
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2011-08-02T21:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

TOWN LIFE

They went into camp again and this time they sat for three months. They were there so long they thought of the camp as a town and gave the paths between the tents street names based on Minnesota towns. Soon signs were stuck on poles: Winona Avenue, Taylor Falls Street …

It went from summer into fall and they cut trees and made log shanties and drilled in the rain and then snow, but spent most of their time in the log huts plugging leaks, keeping out cold wind and trying to get their clothes dry. They were rarely successful.

Disease spread through the camp like fire as the weather worsened, and with the disease came the rumors.

It was said that McClellan was afraid to fight. Almost all the men—including Charley—loved the new commander and felt that he was only trying to be easy on the men by avoiding a winter campaign. But the rumors said that Lincoln—most of the men also loved the president and called him Old Rail Splitter—was very dissatisfied with McClellan’s “lack of bite” and wanted some attack made on the Rebels, somewhere, at some time soon.

This did not translate into action and the men sat another month, getting sicker and sicker, both physically and in their spirits.

Rumor said that a whole regiment from New York had deserted and gone home. It turned out not to be true—four men had deserted from a New York regiment and had been caught and tried and shot by firing squads—but it showed the lack of morale.

Another rumor said that a young general named Grant out west in Tennessee had fetched the Rebels such a hit that he’d whipped their western army and that Grant was a drunk and that Lincoln had said, “Find out what kind of whiskey he’s drinking and send a case to all the generals.” This proved to be the truth, but none of it really mattered to Charley.

Like most of the men, he worked at taking care of himself. It kept him busy. The camp was worse than a pigsty. Men from the country—most of the Minnesota volunteers—knew of country living. They dug holes for latrines, kept their areas cleaner than others and worked at getting good shelter. Men from cities—New Yorkers were the worst—had little concept of living with the land and no idea how to take care of themselves. They left sewage in the open, didn’t drain the slops from their shelters and consequently were virtually destroyed by disease. Some New York companies lost more than half their men to dysentery, typhus, measles and diarrhea, which soon spread to other units.

It seemed somebody was always either getting sick, was sick, or was getting over something.

Charley and the rest were kept moving just working at repairing the shelter, keeping it clean and cooking. The food was simple and for the most part bad: beans, always beans, salt pork and coffee. Soon a bakery with wood-fired ovens was going and bread was doled out to the men.

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