Rested here in a piney woods until [today]. These woods
reminded me of the hunting scenes I had enjoyed in Texas before the war. I
noticed we had been passing over ground for the last two days that I had passed
over two years before on my way home from Texas. The Rapides Bayou, and it is
not a bayou, takes its rise here in a large spring, which is peculiar from the
fact that its waters divide, and part flows north and empties into Red River,
and the other part flows south forming the Rapides Bayou and empties into Grand
Lake, thence into the Gulf of Mexico.
[The] Army made an about face early in the morning, and
commenced to retrace its steps towards Alexandra, arriving at 4 p. m. This was
a severe march, making only one halt in twenty miles, and a hot day at that.
But it often happens that severe trials work out for us blessings instead of
afflictions. Our severe march proved to be a case in point. My larder, or
rather haversack, I knew was running low, and the question arose as to what I
was to have for dinner. My entire stock on hand consisted of a piece of boiled
salt pork, a few pieces of hard tack and some coffee. Salt junk was all gone.
Salt pork I could not, and hard tack I would not eat, and what was to be done?
After a little reflection I said, “I am resolved what to do. I will soak my
hard tack in some hot water and soften it up a little, and fry some of the salt
pork in my tin plate and then fry the soaked hard tack in the gravy.” Very
good! Why had not I thought of that before? But after a long time noon came,
and the army halted for dinner in a wood where there was a brook, and I
proceeded to put my plans in operation. A soldier noticed something unusual
going on and stood watching me. As soon as he saw what I was going to do he
wheeled on his heel and walked rapidly away. My plan was successful, and the
dish was quite, and I may say, very palateable at least to me at that time. But
I had builded better than I knew. I gave it no farther thought, only that I
should repeat the process upon future occasions. So I did not mention it to
anybody, but in less than a week I was surprised to see everybody frying soaked
hard tack and salt pork. The officers' servants had caught the idea, and it was
a prominent dish on every officer's table, from the General down to the lowest
private. I had been in the Army of the Gulf almost two years, and I had never
seen it done before. I had taken two unpalatable articles of food, forming a
part of the soldiers' rations, and put them together, making one wholesome,
palatable dish. But nobody knows who did it to this day, I suppose on account
of my inability to blow a horn. But the idea must have been a saving of
thousands of dollars to the subsistance department, for the pork ration was
almost always discarded by the soldiers and thrown away, while the hard tack
was a byword and a hissing. The original packages were marked “B. C.” I never
knew exactly what it meant, but the soldiers said it meant “Before Christ,'”
and judging from the hard and stale condition of some of it, I was not prepared
to say it did not mean just that.
SOURCE: Abstracted from George G. Smith, Leaves from
a Soldier's Diary, p. 52-5
No comments:
Post a Comment