The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 08, No. 49, November, 1861

On the other hand, in fixing on a spot for encampment, it is due to the soldier to avoid all boggy places, and all places where the air is stagnant from inclosure by woods, or near burial-grounds, or where the soil is unfavorable to drainage. The military officer must admit the advice of the sanitary officer in the case, though he may not be always able to adopt it. When no overwhelming military considerations interfere, the soldiers have a right to be placed on the most dry and pervious soil that may offer, in an airy situation, removed from swamps and dense woods, and admitting of easy drainage. Wood and water used to be the quartermaster's sole demands; now, good soil and air are added, and a suitable slope of the ground, and other minor requisites.

It depends on the character of the country whether quarters in towns and villages are best, or huts or tents. In Europe, town quarters are found particularly fatal; and the state of health of the inmates of tents and huts depends much on the structure and placing of either. Precisely the same kind of hut in the Crimea held a little company of men in perfect health, or a set of invalids, carried out one after another to their graves. Nay, the same hut bore these different characters, according to its position at the top of a slope, or half-way down, so as to collect under its floor the drainage from a spring. American soldiers, however, are hardly likely to be hutted, I suppose; so I need say no more than that in huts and tents alike it is indispensable to health that there should be air-holes,—large spaces, sheltered from rain,—in the highest part of the structure, whether the entrance below be open or closed. The sanitary officers no doubt have it in charge to see that every man has his due allowance of cubic feet of fresh air,—in other words, to take care that each tent or other apartment is well ventilated, and not crowded. The men's affair is to establish such rules among comrades as that no one shall stop up air-holes, or overcrowd the place with guests, or taint the air with unwholesome fumes. In the British army, bell-tents are not allowed at all as hospital tents. Active, healthy men may use them in their resting hours; but their condemnation as abodes for the sick shows how pressing is the duty of ventilating them for the use of the strongest and healthiest.

A sound and airy tent being provided, the next consideration is of bedding.

The surgeons of the British force were always on the lookout for straw and hay, after being informed at the outset that the men could not have bedding, though it was hoped there was enough for the hospitals. A few nights in the dust, among the old bones and rubbish of Gallipoli, and then in the Bulgarian marshes, showed that it would be better to bestow the bedding before the men went into hospital, and sheets of material were obtained for some of them to lie upon. A zealous surgeon pointed out to the proper officer that this bedding consisted in fact of double ticking, evidently intended as paillasses, to be stuffed with straw. The straw not being granted, he actually set to work to make hay; and, being well aided by the soldiers, he soon saw them sleeping on good mattresses. It was understood in England, and believed by the Government, that every soldier in camp had three blankets; and after a time, this came true: but in the interval, during the damp autumn and bitter winter, they had but one. Lying on wet ground, with one damp and dirty blanket over them, prepared hundreds for the hospital and the grave. The mischief was owing to the jealousy of some of the medical authorities, in the first place, who would not see, believe, or allow to be reported, the fact that the men were in any way ill-supplied, because these same doctors had specified the stores that would be wanted,—and next, to the absence of a department for the actual distribution of existing stores. With the bedding the case was the same as with the lime-juice and the rice: there was plenty; but it was not served out till too late. When the huts were inhabited, in the Crimea, and the wooden platforms had a dry soil beneath, and every man had a bed of some sort and three blankets, there was no more cholera or fever.

The American case is radically unlike that of any of the combatants in the Crimean War, because they are on the soil of their own country, within reach of their own railways, and always in the midst of the ordinary commodities of life. In such a position, they can with the utmost ease be supplied with whatever they really want,—so profuse as are the funds placed at the command of the authorities. Considering this, and the well-known handiness of Americans, there need surely be no disease and death from privation. This may be confidently said while we have before us the case of the British in the Crimea during the second winter of the war. A sanitary commission had been sent out; and under their authority, and by the help of experience, everything was rectified. The healthy were stronger than ever; there was scarcely any sickness; and the wounded recovered without drawback. As the British ended, the Americans ought to begin.

On the last two heads of the soldier's case there is little to be said here, because the American troops are at home, and not in a perilous foreign climate, and on the shores of a remote sea. Their drill can hardly be appointed for wrong hours, or otherwise mismanaged. In regard to transport, they have not the embarrassment of crowds of sick and wounded, far away in the Black Sea, without any adequate supply of mules and carriages, after the horses had died off, and without any organization of hospital ships at all equal to the demand. Neither do they depend for clothing and medicines on the arrival of successive ships through the storms of the Euxine; and they will never see the dreary spectacle of the foundering of a noble vessel just arriving, in November, with ample stores of winter clothing, medicines, and comforts, which six hours more would have placed in safety. Under the head of transport, they ought to have nothing to suffer.

Having gone through the separate items, and looking at the case as a whole, we may easily perceive that in America, as in England and France and every other country, the responsibility of the soldier's health in camp is shared thus.

The authorities are bound so to arrange their work as that there shall be no hitch through which disaster shall reach the soldiery. The relations between the military and medical authorities must be so settled and made clear as that no professional jealousy among the doctors shall keep the commanding officers in the dark as to the needs—of their men, and that no self-will or ignorance in commanding officers shall neutralize the counsels of the medical men. The military authorities must not depend on the report of any doctor who may be incompetent as to the provision made for the men's health, and the doctor must be authorized to represent the dangers of a bad encampment without being liable to a recommendation to keep his opinion to himself till he is asked for it. These particular dangers are best obviated by the appointment of sanitary officers, to attend the forces, and take charge of the health of the army, as the physicians and surgeons take charge of its sickness. If, besides, there is a separate department between the commissariat and the soldiery, to see that the comforts provided are actually brought within every man's grasp, the authorities will have done their part.

The rest is the soldier's own concern. When cruelly pressed by hardship, the soldiers in Turkey and the Crimea took to drinking; and what they drank was poison. The vile raid with which they intoxicated themselves carried hundreds to the grave as surely as arsenic would have done. When, at last, they were well fed, warm, clean, and comfortable, and well amused in the coffee-houses opened for them, there was an end, or a vast diminution, of the evil of drunkenness. Good coffee and harmless luxuries were sold to them at cost price; and books and magazines and newspapers, chess, draughts, and other games, were at their command. The American soldiery are a more cultivated set of men than these, and are in proportion more inexcusable for any resort to intemperance. They ought to have neither the external discomfort nor the internal vacuity which have caused drunkenness in other armies. The resort to strong drinks so prevalent in the Americans is an ever-lasting mystery to Europeans, who recognize in them a self-governing people, universally educated up to a capacity for intellectual interests such as are elsewhere found to be a safeguard against intemperance in drink. If the precautions instituted by the authorities are well supported by the volunteers themselves, the most fatal of all perils will be got rid of. If not, the army will perish by a veritable suicide. But such a fate cannot be in store for such an army.

There is something else almost as indispensable to the health of soldiers as sobriety, and that is subordination. The true, magnanimous, patriotic spirit of subordination is not more necessary to military achievement than it is to the personal composure and the trustworthiness of nerve of the individual soldier. A strong desire and fixed habit of obedience to command relieve a man of all internal conflict between self-will and circumstance, and give him possession of his full powers of action and endurance. If absolute reliance on authority is a necessity to the great majority of mankind, (which it is,) it is to the few wisest and strongest a keen enjoyment when they can righteously indulge in it; and the occasion on which it is supremely a duty—in the case of military or naval service—is one of privilege. Americans are less accustomed than others to prompt and exact obedience, being a self-governing and unmilitary nation: and they may require some time to become aware of the privileges of subordination to command. But time will satisfy them of the truth; and those who learn the lesson most quickly will be the most sensible of the advantage to health of body, through ease of mind. The abdication of self-will in regard to the ordering of affairs, the repose of reliance upon the responsible parties, the exercise of silent endurance about hardships and fatigues, the self-respect which relishes the honor of cooperation through obedience, the sense of patriotic devotedness which glows through every act of submission to command,—all these elevated feelings tend to composure of the nerves, to the fortifying of brain and limb, and the genial repose and exaltation of all the powers of mind and body. I need not contrast with this the case of the discontented and turbulent volunteer, questioning commands which he is not qualified to judge of, and complaining of troubles which cannot be helped. It is needless to show what wear-and-tear is caused by such a spirit, and how nerve and strength must, in such a case, fail in the hour of effort or of crisis, and give way at once before the assault of disease. By the aid of sobriety and the calm and cheerful subordination of the true military character, the health of the Federal army may be equal to its high mission: and all friends of human freedom, in all lands, must heartily pray that it may be so.

There is another department of the subject which I propose to treat of another month: "Health in the Military Hospital."

"THE STORMY PETREL."

  Where the gray crags beat back the northern main,  And all around, the ever restless waves,  Like white sea-wolves, howl on the lonely sands,  Clings a low roof, close by the sounding surge.  If, in your summer rambles by the shore,  His spray-tost cottage you may chance espy,  Enter and greet the blind old mariner.  Full sixty winters he has watched beside  The turbulent ocean, with one purpose warmed:  To rescue drowning men. And round the coast—  For so his comrades named him in his youth—  They know him as "The Stormy Petrel" still.  Once he was lightning-swift, and strong; his eyes  Peered through the dark, and far discerned the wreck  Plunged on the reef. Then with bold speed he flew,  The life-boat launched, and dared the smiting rocks.  'T is said by those long dwelling near his door,  That hundreds have been storm-saved by his arm;  That never was he known to sleep, or lag  In-doors, when danger swept the seas. His life  Was given to toil, his strength to perilous blasts.  In freezing floods when tempests hurled the deep,  And battling winds clashed in their icy caves,  Scared housewives, waking, thought of him, and said,  "'The Stormy Petrel' is abroad to-night,  And watches from the cliffs."                             He could not rest  When shipwrecked forms might gasp amid the waves,  And not a cry be answered from the shore.  Now Heaven has quenched his sight; but when he hears  By his lone hearth the sullen sea-winds clang,  Or listens, in the mad, wild, drowning night,  As younger footsteps hurry o'er the beach  To pluck the sailor from his sharp-fanged death,—  The old man starts, with generous impulse thrilled,  And, with the natural habit of his heart,  Calls to his neighbors in a cheery tone,  Tells them he'll pilot toward the signal guns,  And then, remembering all his weight of years,  Sinks on his couch, and weeps that he is blind.

A STORY OF TO-DAY

Margaret stood looking down in her quiet way at the sloping moors and fog. She, too, had her place and work. She thought that night she saw it clearly, and kept her eyes fixed on it, as I said. They plodded steadily down the wide years opening before her. Whatever slow, unending work lay in them, whatever hungry loneliness they held for her heart, or coarseness of deed, she saw it all, shrinking from nothing. She looked at the tense blue-corded veins in her wrist, full of fine pure blood,—gauged herself coolly, her lease of life, her power of endurance,—measured it out against the work waiting for her. The work would be long, she knew. She would be old before it was finished, quite an old woman, hard, mechanical, worn out. But the day would be so bright, when it came, it would atone for all: the day would be bright, the home warm again; it would hold all that life had promised her of good.

All? Oh, Margaret, Margaret! Was there no sullen doubt in the brave resolve? Was there no shadow rose just then, dark, ironical, blotting out father and mother and home, coming nearer, less alien to your soul than these, than even your God?

If any such cold, masterful shadow rose out of years gone, and clutched at the truest life of her heart, she stifled it, and thrust it down. And yet, leaning on the gate, and thinking drearily, vacantly, she remembered a time when God came nearer to her than He did now, and came through that shadow,—when, by the help of that dead hope, He of whom she read to-night came close, an infinitely tender Helper, who, with the human love that was in her heart to-day, had loved his mother and John and Mary. Now, struggle as she would for healthy hopes and warmth, the world was gray and silent. Her defeated woman's nature called it so, bitterly. Christ was a dim ideal power, heaven far-off. She doubted if it held anything as real as that which she had lost.

As if to bring back the old times more vividly to her, there happened one of those curious little coincidences with which Fate, we think, has nothing to do. She heard a quick step along the clay road, and a muddy little terrier jumped up, barking, beside her. She stopped with a suddenness strange in her slow movements. "Tiger!" she said, stroking its head with passionate eagerness. The dog licked her hand, smelt her clothes to know if she were the same: it was two years since he had seen her. She sat there, softly stroking him. Presently there was a sound of wheels jogging down the road, and a voice singing snatches of some song, one of those cheery street-songs that the boys whistle. It was a low, weak voice, but very pleasant. Margaret heard it through the dark; she kissed the dog with a strange paleness on her face, and stood up, quiet, attentive as before. Tiger still kept licking her hand, as it hung by her side: it was cold, and trembled as he touched it. She waited a moment, then pushed the dog from her, as if his touch, even, caused her to break some vow. He whined, but she hurried away, not waiting to know how he came, or with whom. Perhaps, if Dr. Knowles had seen her face as she looked back at him, he would have thought there were depths in her nature which his probing eyes had never reached.

The wheels came close, and directly a cart stopped at the gate. It was one of those little wagons that hucksters drive; only this seemed to be a home-made affair, patched up with wicker-work and bits of board. It was piled up with baskets of vegetables, eggs, and chickens, and on a broken bench in the middle sat the driver, a woman. You could not help laughing, when you looked at the whole turn-out, it had such a make-shift look altogether.

The reins were twisted rope, the wheels uneven. It went jolting along in such a careless, jolly way, as if it would not care in the least, should it go to pieces any minute just there in the road. The donkey that drew it was bony and blind of one eye; but he winked the other knowingly at you, as if to ask if you saw the joke of the thing. Even the voice of the owner of the establishment, chirruping some idle song, as I told you, was one of the cheeriest sounds you ever heard. Joel, up at the barn, forgot his dignity to salute it with a prolonged "Hillo!" and presently appeared at the gate.

"I'm late, Joel," said the weak voice. It sounded like a child's near at hand.

"We can trade in the dark, Lois, both bein' honest," he responded, graciously, hoisting a basket of tomatoes into the cart, and taking out a jug of vinegar.

"Is that Lois?" said Mrs. Howth, coming to the gate. "Sit still, child.

Don't get down."

But the child, as she called her, had scrambled off the cart, and stood beside her, leaning on the wheel, for she was helplessly crippled.

"I thought you would be down tonight. I put some coffee on the stove.

Bring it out, Joel."

Mrs. Howth never put up the shield between herself and this member of "the class,"—because, perhaps, she was so wretchedly low in the social scale. However, I suppose she never gave a reason for it even to herself. Nobody could help being kind to Lois, even if he tried. Joel brought the coffee with more readiness than he would have waited on Mrs. Howth.

"Barney will be jealous," he said, patting the bare ribs of the old donkey, and glancing wistfully at his mistress.

"Give him his supper, surely," she said, taking the hint.

It was a real treat to see how Lois enjoyed her supper, sipping and tasting the warm coffee, her face in a glow, like an epicure over some rare Falernian. You would be sure, from, just that little thing, that no sparkle of warmth or pleasure in the world slipped by her which she did not catch and enjoy and be thankful for to the uttermost. You would think, perhaps, pitifully, that not much pleasure or warmth would ever go down so low, within her reach. Now that she stood on the ground, she scarcely came up to the level of the wheel; some deformity of her legs made her walk with a curious rolling jerk, very comical to see. She laughed at it, when other people did; if it vexed her at all, she never showed it. She had turned back her calico sun-bonnet, and stood looking up at Mrs. Howth and Joel, laughing as they talked—with her. The face would have startled you on so old and stunted a body. It was a child's face, quick, eager, with that pitiful beauty you always see in deformed people. Her eyes, I think, were the kindliest, the hopefullest I ever saw. Nothing but the pale thickness of her skin betrayed the fact that set Lois apart from even the poorest poor,—the taint in her veins of black blood.

"Whoy! be n't this Tiger?" said Joel, as the dog ran yelping about him.

"How comed yoh with him, Lois?"

"Tiger an' his master's good friends o' mine,—you remember they allus was. An' he's back now, Mr. Holmes,—been back for a month."

Margaret, walking in the porch with her father, stopped.

"Are you tired, father? It is late."

"And you are worn out, poor child! It was selfish in me to forget.

Good-night, dear!"

Margaret kissed him, laughing cheerfully, as she led him to his room-door. He lingered, holding her dress.

"Perhaps it will be easier for you tomorrow than it was to-day?" hesitating.

"I am sure it will. To-morrow will be sure to be better than to-day."

She left him, and went away with a slow step that did not echo the promise of her words.

Joel, meanwhile, consulted apart with his mistress.

"Of course," she said, emphatically.—"You must stay until morning, Lois. It is too late. Joel will toss you up a bed in the loft."

The queer little body hesitated.

"I can stay," she said, at last. "It's his watch at the mill to-night."

"Whose watch?" demanded Joel.

Her face brightened.

"Father's. He's back, mum."

Joel caught himself in a whistle.

"He's very stiddy, Joel,—as stiddy as yuh."

"I am very glad he has come back, Lois," said Mrs. Howth, gravely.

At every place where Lois had been that day she had told her bit of good news, and at every place it had been met with the same kindly smile and "I'm glad he's back, Lois."

Yet Joe Yare, fresh from two years in the penitentiary, was not exactly the person whom society usually welcomes with open arms. Lois had a vague suspicion of this, perhaps; for, as she hobbled along the path, she added to her own assurance of his "stiddiness" earnest explanations to Joel of how he had a place in the Croft Street woollen-mills, and how Dr. Knowles had said he was as ready a stoker as any in the furnace-rooms.

The sound of her weak, eager voice was silent presently, and nothing broke the quiet and cold of the night. Even the morning, when it came long after, came quiet and cool,—the warm red dawn helplessly smothered under great waves of gray cloud. Margaret, looking out into the thick fog, lay down wearily again, closing her eyes. What was the day to her?

Very slowly the night was driven back. An hour after, when she lifted her head again, the stars were still glittering through the foggy arch, like sparks of brassy blue, and the sky and hills and valleys were one drifting, slow-heaving mass of ashy damp. Off in the east a stifled red film groped through. It was another day coming; she might as well get up, and live the rest of her life out;—what else had she to do?

Whatever this night had been to the girl, it left one thought sharp, alive, in the exhausted quiet of her brain: a cowardly dread of the trial of the day, when she would see him again. Was the old struggle of years before coming back? Was it all to go over again? She was worn out. She had been quiet in these—two years: what had gone before she never looked back upon; but it made her thankful for even this stupid quiet. And now, when she had planned her life, busy and useful and contented, why need God have sent the old thought to taunt her? A wild, sickening sense of what might have been struggled up: she thrust it down,—she had kept it down all night; the old pain should not come back,—it should not. She did not think of the love she had given up as a dream, as verse-makers or sham people do; she knew it to be the reality of her life. She cried for it even now, with all the fierce strength of her nature; it was the best she knew; through it she came nearest to God. Thinking of the day when she had given it up, she remembered it with a vague consciousness of having fought a deadly struggle with her fate, and that she had been conquered,—never had lived again. Let it be; she could not bear the struggle again.

She went on dressing herself in a dreary, mechanical way. Once, a bitter laugh came on her face, as she looked into the glass, and saw the dead, dull eyes, and the wrinkle on her forehead. Was that the face to be crowned with delicate caresses and love? She scorned herself for the moment, grew sick of herself, balked, thwarted in her true life as she was. Other women whom God has loved enough to probe to the depths of their nature have done the same,—saw themselves as others saw them: their strength drying up within them, jeered at, utterly alone. It is a trial we laugh at. I think the quick fagots at the stake were fitter subjects for laughter than the slow gnawing hunger in the heart of many a slighted woman or a selfish man. They come out of the trial as out of martyrdom, according to their faith: you see its marks sometimes in a frivolous old age going down with tawdry hopes and starved eyes to the grave; you see its victory in the freshest, fullest lives in the earth. This woman had accepted her trial, but she took it up as an inflexible fate which she did not understand; it was new to her; its solitude, its hopeless thirst were freshly bitter. She loathed herself as one whom God had thought unworthy of every woman's right,—to love and be loved.