Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 306, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 December 1912 — WAR REMINISCHCES [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

WAR REMINISCHCES

OLD SOLDIER TELLS A STORY ReminiscenSUr of Winter Fifty Year* Ago Are Related by Veteran Attacked by Woodtlcka. “Fifty years ago at this time," said the old soldier, "we were_where it was warmer, on an island well down on the southern Atlantic coast. “As far as the temperature went, It was very comfortable. And it was also picturesque as to scenery. There were palmetto trees around and big oaks with long brown moss hanging from them, and of various sorts. Also there was now and then a centipede crawling around and there were woodticks nad fleas, and occasionally an alligator. "At first the woodticks bothered us considerably till we learned how to handle them. This particular brand of woodtick has a spiral bead not unlike the point of a gimlet and it bores Into the nesh. At first when we found woodticks attacking us we used to pull them out or we thought we did, but by pulling on them we left the head In the flesh. Later, when we had learned to unscrew them, we got along better with the woodticks, but the fleas always bothered us. “For other diversions there we had more or less drilling, though I think I may truly say that we had by that time come to be a pretty fine regiment, and then we had guard and picket duty to do, and we had also a good deal of fatigue duty, this including at that particular time the building of roads with stretches here and there of corduroy laid through swamps to make the roads secure enough to bear hauling over them heavy guns and mortars. “A good deal of this labor was night work, done in- the dark in order as far as possible to keep knowledge of it from the enemy, the purpose of it all being to lay siege to a fort really the property of Uncle Sam but just then in possession of our Confederate bretbera. e “So what with one thing and another we were abundantly and constantly occupied and it was all very novel and interesting. True ft was a life that had its drawbacks, but as I Took out at that thermometer her now and see it marking 5 aboveszero and * then reflect back, why, it had also its advantages, and one of these most certainly was that there at least was a place where one coaid keep warm.”