Free Karl Bacon by An Eye for Glory: The Civil War Chronicles of a Citizen Soldier

Carpenter was ever happier to lose a wager.
    The refreshing respite ended and reality closed around us once again. We marched past the armory made famous by the abolitionist John Brown. He and his small band of followers had seized it in hopes of arming an uprising of slaves, but after a few days, John Brown and his cronies had been captured and hanged for treason. Our route led us through the center of town, then steeply uphill for another two miles to Bolivar Heights. Our assignment was to occupy the breastworks on the heights and guard against any possible Rebel attack, but as we soon discovered, the breastworks were not vacant. They were already occupied by dozens of Union men, albeit dead ones, who had been killed in the fighting the week before when the town fell to the Rebels. Animals had savaged some of the corpses and all had decayed rapidly in the heat and humidity. The bodies were quickly moved outside the works and buried. The earth was turned over where the corpses had lain, and the Fourteenth Connecticut Volunteers set up camp within the breastworks.
    And there we remained until the end of October. As the shorter autumn days gave way to chilly and even frosty nights, we lacked the things we needed most, clean clothes, warm woolen blankets, and tents for shelter. The army had forced us to leave our knapsacks at Fort Ethan Allen when we marched for Maryland, so we had only what clothes we were wearing at the time and our rubber blankets, which served as our only protection against the weather.
    We lived in squalor. The drinking water was poor, and the unvarying diet of hardtack and salt pork might fill a soldier’s belly, but it was hardly sufficient to keep him hale and hardy. Nearly everyone became sick with colds or fevers, and some fell ill with pneumonia. To a man, the regiment weakened by the day. Dysentery and diarrhea were epidemic. Some in our ranks fell to more deadly illnesses like malaria and typhus. As for myself, in addition to regular bouts of diarrhea, I came down with a bad cold just a few days after crossing the river. I became weak and feverish and was plagued with a coarse, hacking cough that at times seemed about to tear me asunder. The next morning, immediately after roll call, I reported for sick call.
    “What’s the matter with you, Private?” Doc Rockwell asked.
    “I have a bad cough and a cold.” I coughed two or three times as proof. Doc Rockwell thumped my chest and my back. He put a hand on my forehead for a second or two to check for fever.
    “You do have a cold, but you’re not that bad,” Doc Rockwell said. “You don’t need to go to a hospital.” He reached into a cupboard, removed the lid from a small jar, and dispensed a large brown pill into his open hand. “Here,” he said, holding the pill out to me, “take this.”
    I popped the pill into my mouth just as I noticed something like a cruel grin on the Doc’s face. “Swallow it,” he ordered.
    My eyes went wide and I looked for a place to spit the horrid thing out.
    “Swallow it, Private!”
    I can attest that this pill was indeed a cure-all, since at Bolivar I reported for sick call only the one time. The next day, though no better, I passed on sick call and reported for duty as usual and tried to stay as warm and dry as possible.
    Nineteen enlisted members of our regiment died at Bolivar, the same number as were killed at Antietam. Additional scores spent long weeks in hospitals; some recovered sufficiently to return to the ranks, but many were so weakened that they were sent home on medical discharges. These numbers were multiplied throughout all the other units at Bolivar. A worthless, needless waste of good men could have been easily avoided if the army had seen fit to give us proper shelter, warm clothing, and nourishing food. Merely the arrival of our knapsacks would have improved our lot immeasurably.
    “Remember the Dark Ages?” John asked one evening as the four soldiers from Naugatuck warmed