The Unknown Warrior (27 page)

Despite the protestations of Private James Cook, D Company 24th Regiment of Foot that ‘it is nothing but mountains here; all biscuits to eat' (Emery, 1977: 95), the British army in the Zulu wars was generally provided with meat. This is born out by finds of the remains of sheep, goat and cattle close to the front of Fort Bromhead at Rorke's Drift, where documents suggest they were slaughtered for food (Adrian Greaves, 2002: 342). Among the bottles recovered from this site, ‘one bottle stopper bore the embossed letters of Lea and Perrins' (
ibid.
: 343), a well-known British sauce manufacturer.

Excavations at the British Boer War period rubbish dump at the site of Fort Schanskop, Praetoria, also yielded a Worcestershire sauce bottle alongside animal bones. In addition, one ceramic toothpaste container and two wooden toothbrushes were recovered – perhaps a necessity following this consumption (Pienaar, 2002).

Excavated sites relating to the American Civil War show not only the same presence of animal bones, but, in some cases, also the area of cooking. The discoveries by Potter, Sonderman
et al.
(2003: 23) at Brawner Farm are interesting: ‘Excavation of the surrounding soil revealed a Confederate pewter copy of a US model 1858 canteen. Still in their original context were the iron roller buckles from the canteen sling and stains from the iron chain that had held the stopper to the canteen.' This was ‘found alongside fire-cracked rocks, burned brick and mortar fragments and bones from cow, pig and horse with marks of crude butchery and burning' (
ibid.
: 24).

In the nineteenth century we benefit from the frequent press articles that were written during lengthy wars, discussing the conditions endured by soldiers on campaign. The American Civil War is a major case in point; an article in the
New York Times
of 1862 discusses the state of Confederate soldiers, their rations and the misleading belief that this indicated imminent defeat for the South:

DESTITUTION OF REBEL TROOPS

Correspondence from the vicinity of the rebel armies, and the reports of all those who visit their lines under flags of truce, concur in stating that ‘extreme destitution' prevails among them. The men are found with rags tied around their feet instead of shoes; they are seen eating ears of green corn, cob and all; they search for, pick up and eat the bits of hard bread that our own troops throw away; while for clothing and tents a set of vagabond gipsies would excel them.

All of this sort of information is interesting, and it makes readable letters. We have had much that was similar heretofore, and it used to convey a certain degree of confidence to the country that the rebels were on their last legs, and might soon expect to succumb from sheer exhaustion of nature. But such delusive hopes no longer fill our breasts when we read these stories. They have augured nothing in our favour heretofore, and we do not trust them anymore. We have found that a shoeless army marches fifty miles in forty-eight hours, and surprises the best-shod army that any country has ever turned out …

The truth is, the rebel Generals strip their armies for a march, as a man strips to run a race. Their men are ‘destitute' when they reach our lines, because they cannot cumber themselves with supplies. They come to fight – not to eat. They march to a battlefield, not a dress parade. (
New York Times
, Monday 10 September 1862: 4, col. 4)

The size of armies engaged in this war entailed huge logistical organisation and, as part of this, large supply depots. At the US Army Civil War depot at Jessamine County, Kentucky, we have gained useful information as to the nature of food supplies for the troops. Tin cans, including of sardine, were recovered, as were 82 butchered bones (pig, cow, sheep, rabbit, fish – bass and pike – chicken and turkey. Additionally, Owen's House had 20g of eggshell. (McBride
et al.
, 2003: 99).

It was not only the British soldier who enjoyed preserves and pickles with his food, work at Fort C.F. Smith had finds of ‘food bottles … for the garrison including bitters and medicine bottles also cathedral-style pickle jars and sauce bottles, ribbed mustard jars …' (Balicki, 2003: 143).

These days are passed as follows. After the morning parade every one is busy employed in cleaning appointments. This done the day is devoted to Athletic exercises, boxing, wrestling, running, picking up a hundred stones, some times on foot at others on horse back, cricket, football, running in sacks and any other amusement we might fancy. (Wheeler, 1999: 195)

Time spent in actual combat filled a relatively small proportion of a soldier's life. As a consequence, the infantryman suffered long periods of boredom punctuated by short, terrifying episodes of fighting. Archaeological work has uncovered elements of a soldier's life in terms of filling the duller moments of spare time, when they were left to their own devices.

Much of this may well have revolved around gaming of various sorts. The Napoleonic sites mentioned in this chapter yield traces of such activities; bone dominoes were recovered from the forts at the end of Berry Head (Berry Head Archaeology, 2000). Cunliffe's work at Portchester seemed to suggest a similar picture with three fragments of small boxes, made to hold gaming pieces, being found (Cunliffe and Garratt, 1994: 114). Indeed, several dice and six dominoes were also found on site – an apposite discovery, as the latter were a ‘game introduced to Britain in late 18th Century by French prisoners' (
ibid.
: fig. 32). Finally, ‘Two gaming fish were found in the outer bailey. They were used in connection with card games such as quadrille and are mentioned by Jane Austen in
Pride and Prejudice
published in 1813' (
ibid.
: 113).

Board games and dominoes were also popular in the American Civil War, the excavations at Brawner Farm producing a specially carved projectile. The author believed that ‘judging by its shape, one bullet was probably a chess piece. During the Civil War, it was common for soldiers on both sides to carve bullets as a way of alleviating boredom' (Potter
et al.
2003: 16–17). On the battlefield site of Chickamauga, lead gaming pieces were also recovered (Cornelison, 2003: 298–300), and dice and dominoes were recovered from Kenmore Farm. This latter site revealed a particularly poignant element pertaining to an individual infantry private. A stencil, belonging to Private Charles R. Powers, Company G, 19th Maine Regiment, was found in the garden of the site – this had been used to mark his belongings. ‘Private Powers received a severe wound during actions at nearby Chancellorsville (May 1–3, 1863) and was taken to a Union hospital established at Kenmore. It was here that he died. His stencil, no longer of value to anyone, was discarded in Kenmore's gardens' (see George Washington's Fredericksburg Foundation, 2005).

Writings

The nineteenth century saw frequent war dispatches in the newspapers of countries involved in conflict, and there are great contemporary literary works of celebrated novelists such as Thackeray and Tolstoy. Increased literacy at this time has enabled the historian to examine a large number of letters written by the ‘common man', by infantry privates rather than just the commanders. The soldiers also left their own personal scribblings on site. Prisoners (see page 162) often inscribed their name, initials or regimental number on the walls of their place of confinement. There is also the legacy left by soldiers in their campaign theatres – various monuments in Egypt were carved with the names of combatants in Napoleon's army.

The British, too, were keen to display regimental pride by carving their unit's crest. The best example of this is the crest of the 24th Regiment carved into the rocks of the Oskarsberg terraces overlooking the mission station at Rorke's Drift, South Africa, after the battle (Adrian Greaves, 2002: 348). This was perhaps accomplished not only to commemorate the remarkable action at the mission station itself, but also in memory of those other members of the regiment who had not been so fortunate at Isandlwana.

Regimental insignia are also carved and painted on to the rock faces at several places along the road close to the fort at Ali Masjid on the Khyber Pass on the northern frontier with modern-day Pakistan and Afghanistan – the Gordon Highlanders, South Wales Borderers, Royal Sussex, Cheshire and Dorset regiments are all represented. Some of these depictions are nineteenth century, others from the early twentieth century, including the 2/4th Battalion of the Border Regiment inscribed 1917–1918 (its Battle Honours list the Northern Frontier of India 1916 and 1917, and Afghanistan 1919).

Individual soldiers also carved names and regimental details as reminders of their presence. On analysis of a series of late-eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century inscriptions at the Brimstone Hill Fortress on St Kitts, West Indies, V.T.C. Smith (1995: 102) believed that such carvings can be separated into seven categories: 1. soldiers' names; 2. initials; 3. regimental references; 4. sayings; 5. dates; 6. drawings; 7. unknown. The graffiti could, of course, use combinations of all seven categories and thus we are able to distinguish individual soldiers and their regimental affiliations. ‘George Swales' of the ‘3rd Buffs', for example (
ibid.
: 102), or ‘J. Sutherland' ‘93 High …' ‘24 Oct 1829' – the 93rd Regiment, 2nd Argyle and Sutherland Highlanders (
ibid.
: 104). ‘F' or ‘T' ‘Duffy' of the ‘28th' (28th Regiment – the 1st Gloucestershire Regiment) also left his mark (
ibid.
: 105). This shows that many soldiers were literate to a degree and desired to leave evidence for their existence.

The great rise in the interest in the common footsoldier in the poetry and paintings of the age is also interesting. Perhaps the most famous (and sardonic) of these poems is ‘Tommy', by Rudyard Kipling – again, back to Private Thomas Atkins – the eponymous infantry private. The stanzas include the following:

Then it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' ‘Tommy, 'ow's yer soul?'
But it's ‘Thin red line of 'eroes' when the drums begin to roll, –
The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll,
O it's ‘Thin red line of 'eroes' when the drums begin to roll.

We aren't no thin red 'eroes, nor we aren't no blackguards too,
But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you;
An' if sometimes our conduck isn't all your fancy paints,
Why, single men in barricks don't grow into plaster saints;

The infantryman in the poem decries the public for its hypocritical attitude to the army at time of war and at the same time confesses that discipline could not possibly be maintained at all times. Kipling's own son, John, was killed while fighting in an infantry regiment, the Irish Guards, at the Battle of Loos, in September 1915 during the First World War.

Poetry does not simply examine the common soldier per se, but also deals with the ‘heroic' figure of the Unknown Soldier killed in battle. It serves to emphasise the sacrifice of the soldier killed on campaign and demands remembrance, yet there is a strong streak of romanticism, lacking the bitter pathos of some of the poetry of the First World War. It should, however, be noted that many poems of the First World War, especially in the early years, could also verge on the sentimental – for example, Rupert Brooke's ‘The Soldier', which contained the lines:

If I should die, think only this of me;

That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England.

(Silkin, 1979: 77)

In Britain, the Boer War was the subject of much attention from poets, leaving us with the celebrated ‘Drummer Hodge', by Thomas Hardy:

They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest

Uncoffined – just as found:

His landmark is a kopje-crest
That breaks the veldt around;

And foreign constellations west
Each night above his mound.

(Silkin, 1979: 75)

and also the ‘March of the Dead', by Robert Service:

They left us on the veldt-side, but we felt we couldn't stop
On this, our England's crowning festal day;
We're the men of Magersfontein, we're the men of Spion Kop,
Colenso – we're the men who had to pay.
We're the men who paid the blood-price. Shall the grave be all our gain?
You owe us. Long and heavy is the score.
Then cheer us for our glory now, and cheer us for our pain,
And cheer us as ye never cheered before.

The private in the American Civil War was also the subject of poetry – for example, the words of Margaret Junkin Preston in ‘Only a Private':

Only a private – it matters not
That I did my duty well,
That all through a score of battles I fought,
And then, like a soldier, I fell.
The country I died for will never heed
My unrequited claim;
And History cannot record the deed,
For she never has heard my name.

Accommodation

In one corner of the room I have collected a quantity of dry fern, this forms my bed, it being necessary to strip to keep free from vermin. Every night the contents of my haversack is transferred to my knapsack. This forms my pillow, at the same time secures my kit and provisions from midnight marauders. The haversack is then converted into a night cap. Being stripped, my legs are thrust into the sleeves of an old watch coat, carefully tied at the cuffs to keep out the cold. The other part of the coat wrapped around my body served for under blanket and sheet.

(Wheeler, 1999: 74)

A soldier's accommodation would depend on whether or not he was on campaign. If he was, then his lot would vary from tent to billet or, particularly close to or during actual periods of combat, out in the field with little to no cover, as highlighted by Wheeler (above). Sleeping in the open was often unpleasant and a frequent gripe of the private, occurring throughout the nineteenth century. One shouldn't assume that those who served in Africa were spared the cold – Private Henry Moses wrote a mournful letter home during the Zulu War: ‘We may never meet again. I repent the day that I took the shilling [enlisted]. I have not seen a bed since I left England. We have only one blanket and are out every night in the rain – no shelter' (Emery, 1977: 95).