Recent improvements
in camp are timbers laid across the swamp on the west side north of the stream
for 20 rods, this will help escape the filth in passing from north to south. A
flume and bridge has been made which improves washing facilities; also a road
from the north to the stream in the east part. We have more variety of food but
scanty allowance, to-wit: corn bread, rice, a curious kind of bean, old and
wormy. For several days a small piece of poor beef has come with cooked
rations, hardly a mouthful, and in lieu a little sorghum molasses. We have built
bake ovens of sand and clay. When several of us have raw meal, we club together
to bake it, it being sweeter baked than smoked on a small fire. It economizes
fuel, encourages the hope it will not have to be eaten raw. There are five very
sick men within a few feet, groaning day and night. It is remarkable with what
tenacity life clings to emaciated, corrupted frames.
Williams of the
111th N. Y., of Lyons, N. Y., a boy of education, talent and refinement, a
nephew of Hon. Alex. Williams, visited us. He is declining rapidly and engages
our sympathy It is a joy to cheer such a sweet spirit. He showed us the
likeness of a beautiful girl, remarking that he never expected to see her
again, and wept bitterly. We all parted with him regretfully. (He died in
September).
I was again struck
today by one of the daily duties of men. Passing from north to south through
camp I see them stripped, examining clothing for lice. Immediately after roll
call they "have a louse," or a "skirmish" or a
"peeling off" as they express it from head to heels to give the
"gray backs" a cleaning out. These pestering varmints infest
clothing, sticking along the seams. Where the torments come from,
how they grow in a day, or an hour, is a mystery. Drawing our minds down to
hunting lice is humiliating; but the man who don't isn't respectable; we feel
disgraced in his company Once a day is tolerable, twice better, three times
makes a man of the first order. Neglect this, and he is soon over run, pitied,
loathed, hated, sneered and snarled at. Lice polute and sap his blood, he
loathes himself and dies. They crawl in droves over the sick, herd in his ears,
gnaw him, shade in his hair deep as the hair is long. Talk about
"gophers" in the army, no name for this! They sap the life of the strongest.
Men who fight their lice effectually every day are brave, meritorious. But
wouldn't we be pretty guests for parlor bedrooms! Trousers under the pillow!
What would the tidy chambermaid say at Hotel Eagle?, Charming guests for
ladies, lousy, brown, yellowed bloated, dirt-eating, wallowing Yankees! And we
do laugh though it is not a laughing matter. But I am the only bachelor in our
notable family of eight; should we be wafted to Northland from Dixie tonight,
no one would be obliged to submit to my embraces. Poor, indeed!
SOURCE: John Worrell
Northrop, Chronicles from the Diary of a War Prisoner in Andersonville
and Other Military Prisons of the South in 1864, pp. 105-6
