Rensselaer Republican, Volume 19, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 December 1886 — Soldiers’ Panics. [ARTICLE]

Soldiers’ Panics.

In South Africa the disaster at Isandlhwana gave the soldiers’ nerves a severe shaking, and it often happened false alarms at night led to the rousing of whole camps, and sometimes even to a reckless discharge of firearms. In some cases friendly natives or even comrades were taken by the excited imagination of a sentry for enemies ; in others unoffending cattle, even a bush or a shrub, becatno the innocent cause of a fusillade sufficient to have dealt widespread destruct on to a host of Zulus. An odd incident, illustrative of the slightness of the cause—or even, perhaps, of tho absence of any cause at all—that gives rise to a panic, occurred on the night of Tel-el-Kebir, amid a small corner of the force that was bivouacking on the battle-field. The narrator had crawled into a marquee in which, with other commissariat stores, were the rum casks in which the troops had received their liquor ration after the fatigues and excitement of the day’s fight and previous night march. Besides one or two commissariat issuers in charge of tho stores, several “odds and ends” of other corps had found their way into the marquee, preferring to rest under its shelter amid the casks and biscuit boxes than under the open sky with the sand for a bed. Suddenly, in the middle of the night, when all were sleeping, a noise and commotion began in a bivouac outside. Before the inhabitants of the tent were sufficiently awake to understand its cause the curtains were thrust aside by a redcoated soldier, who shouted to us to get up: “ The Arabs are in the camp—they are upon us!” Then h > disap-; peared as rapidly as he came. Every one sprang to his arms, aud probably experienced the especially uncomfortable sensation that is caused by a vague feeling of an unseen though imminent danger, against which one is ignorant how to guard. Outside every one around was aroused and-up, eagerly striving to discover from what quarter attack was to be expected. Nothing, however, I more unpleasant occurred than the advent of a staff officer asking the cause of the confusion. Possibly the truth never did rea h headquarters. Afterward, howeter, a report gained ground —no other or better reason was ever forthcoming—that the alarm arose from the screams of a sleeping soldier, who, overwrought perhaps by the horrors 6f the day, had been fighting his battle over again in his dreams.— Chambers’ Journal.