HARDSHIPS OF CAMP-LIFE AT VICKSBURG.
THERE was little level ground on which to camp about the lines. Excavations had to be made to get a level place to sleep. So all the bluffs around Vicksburg were catacombed to afford sleeping apartments. No wonder there was sickness—no wonder Death held high carnival on both sides of the lines. It was not only dangerous, but almost impossible, to reach the little hospitals under the shadow of the guns. Very many times driven at full speed I reached them, but it was at great peril. How the memory of those hospital scenes comes back to me now!
At one point I went down under the guns of the fort at one of the most exposed places, with a carriage-load of supplies for the little fort hospital under the bluff, just behind the heavy guns. I found when I reached there that the position was so dangerous that it would be madness, so the officers said, to try to get out of there till I could go under the cover of darkness. But the afternoon was well-spent in making lemonade andministering to the men who had been stricken down with fever and hardships.
The ceaseless roar of artillery, and scream of shot and shell; the sharp whiz and whirr of small shot just over our heads; the June sun blazing down upon us with torrid heat, and no shelter for the sick but the white canvas tents, perched on the sides of the bluffs in places excavated for them, the bank cutting off the circulation of air,—were almost unbearable. How the poor fever-racked heads and fainting hearts ached amid the ceaseless din and the dust and heat of these little camp hospitals! One poor fellow, with parched lips and cheeks red with the fever that was burning through every vein, said, “I got a little sleep a while ago, and I dreamed that I was at the old spring; but just as I was taking a good cool drink I waked up.”
I partially met his cravings for a drink from the well at the old home by giving him generous draughts of lemonade, but when night came on I had to leave him. Poor boy, I never knew whether he got back to the old spring and home or not. There was no cool water there to allay his burning thirst. One of the hardships of that long summer campaign was the lack of good cool water. There were some springs, and a few wells were dug; but at points water had to be hauled long distances. Think of thousands of men to be supplied—of the thousands of horses and mules,the great burden-bearers of the army, that must have their thirst quenched.
Most of the water for the use in camp was hauled up from the Mississippi River or the Yazoo, through the hot sun in barrels, and stood in camp all day.
During that dreadful day I sat down in one of the tents for a little while; there was a patch of weeds growing near the tent-door. I noticed the weeds shaking as though partridges were running through them. I called attention to the matter, which made the surgeon smile, as he explained, “Why, those are bullets!”
“Bullets? Do bullets come so near as that?”
“Oh, yes,” he answered cheerfully; “they are flying around here quite thick.”
“Do you consider yourself safe while in this tent? It seems to me the bullets are coming very close.”
“It is considered very safe. The bullets fall a little short you see.”
All the while I sat there I watched the bullets coming over and clipping through the weeds.
Three days from that time an officer was killed while sitting in the same chair on the same spot where I had sat and watched the bullets shaking the weeds.