Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 January 1885 — A Muddy Campaign. [ARTICLE]

A Muddy Campaign.

From “Recollections of a Private,” in the Century, we quote the following: “No country can beat a Virginia road for mud. We struck it thick. It was knee-deep. It was verily ‘ heavy marching.’ The foot sank very insidiously into the mud, and reluctantly came out again; it had to be coaxed, and while von were persuading your reluctant left, the willing right was sinking into unknown depths; it came out of the mud like the noise of a suction-pump when the water is exhausted. “The order was given, ‘Route step’; we climbed the banks of the road in search of firm earth, but it couldn’t be found, so we went on pumping away, making about one foot in depth to two in advance. Our feet seemingly weighed twenty pounds each. We carried a number six into the unknown depths ol mud, but it came out a number twelve, elongated, yellow, and nasty; it had lost its fair proportions, and would be mistaken for anything but a foot, if not attached to a leg. It seemed impossible that we should ever be able to find our feet in their primitive condition again. Occasionally a boot or shoe would be left in the bed, and it would take an exploring expedition to find it. Oh, that disgusting, sticking mud! Wad Rider declared that if Virginia was once in the Union, she was now in the mud, A big Irish comrade, Jim O’Brien, facetiously took up the declension of mud, —mud, mudder, murder,—pulling a foot out at each variation for emphasis. Jack E. declared it would be impossible to dislodge an enemy stuck in the mud as we were.

“The army resembled, more than anything else, a congregation of flies making a pilgrimage through molasses. The boys called their feet ‘pontoons,’ ‘mudhooks,’ ‘soil-excavators,’ and other names not quite so polite. When we halted to rest by the wayside, our feet were in the way of ourselves and everybody else. ‘Keep your mudhooks out of my way,’ ‘Save your pontoons for another bridge,’ were heard on all sides, mingled with all the reckless, profane, and quaint jokes common to the army, and which are not for print. “The mud was in constant league with the enemy; an efficient ally in defensive warfare; equivalent to reenforcements of 20,000 infantry. To realize the situation, spread tar a foot deep all over your back-yard, and then try to walk through it; particularly is this experiment recommended to those citizens who were constantly crying, ‘Why doesn’t the army move?’ It took the military valor all out of a man. Any one would think, from reading the Northern newspapers, that we soldiers had macadamized roads to charge over at the enemy. It would have pleased us much to have seen those ‘On to Richmond’ fellows put over a five-mile course in the Virginia mud, loaded with a forty-pound knapsack, sixty rounds of catridge3, and haversacks filled with four days’ rations.”