Officer Impression: Accomodations

[106th PVI]

Gents,
While reading the discussion about Erik's question on mess kits a question of my own came up. When active campaigning season drew to a close how would a line officer's camp be set up? What would his living quarters be like?
In two weeks I will be encamped with the 2d Corps HQ at Gettysburg portraying a staff officer. We will be on the field at the Pennsylvania Monument. My quarters will be simple... "A" frame tent, army cot with small feather bed, "US" issue blanket, pillow, small antique trunk for my clothes and my carpet bag/ valise.
I do not own a mess kit. I do have antique utensils, my "US" tin plate and wire handled issue cup plus "huck" towel. I also have a set of antique china that is period correct. Along with my ration bag and officer haversack. Is this correct? Or am I off target?
I know that when "on the march" my bedding will be the ground and my blanket. I carry nothing else while "on campaign".

Yep, my brass will be shined and my boots polished. Don't want the general dressing me down. :)

Thanks!

[Pvt Schnapps]

Re: Officer Impression: Accomodations

Your question seems to ask this for both a line and a staff officer, so I'll take a shot.

The basic answer of course is the same as that posted regarding mess accommodations. You really want to find a journal or collection of letters from someone in the postion you're portraying and see what they did, because no one (especially me, I guess) can tell you something that's going to be universally true.

That said, the Regulations are written with fixed posts or the march in mind. The Quartermaster's regs specify either so many rooms or so much tentage. G.O. 160 of October 18, 1862 allows a wall tent for every two officers on a Corps staff, three wall tents for the entire field and staff of a full regiment, and a shelter tent for all other officers.

This order set a maximum allowance. Commanders in the field modified it, usually reducing the allowance to, say, flies only for headquarters (Sherman) or requiring officers to share dog tents (W. S. Lincoln describes this for Sigel's campaign up the Valley).

Now, you say you're not in the field, but you're not in a place where you can find rooms, either. In that case, the practice seemed to have been to fix up the field allowance for a more stable situation -- timbering tents for winter, fixing stoves, etc. This would put you in a wall tent with another officer, or a shelter tent.

Sometimes units drew A tents for fixed posts, but you would really want to check that out with the unit you're portraying. You can seldom go wrong doing less. In your specific example, folks might wonder what you're doing in an "end of campaign" scenario in Gettysburg in June. Research might help you to answer that question, or figure something else out.

Of course, there's evidence that the army had its own way that never quite got into either the Regs or General Orders. My favorite discussion on quarters occurs in R. B. Irwin's Seeking the Bubble, an -- alas -- unfinished novel printed serially in The United States Services Magazine mostly while the war was still going on:

The silence was not again broken until we had nearly reached the town, when Colonel Cromwell abruptly brought his horse to the trot, and, turning to me, asked, while my stiff old beast was still bumping through the change of gait, "Where are General Bulger's head-quarters?"

"Don't you know ?" I was surprised into exclaiming.

"Young gentleman," he replied, half sharply, " that's not the question. I know, of course. Do you ?"

"No, sir."

"Yes, you do. No man is fit to be an assistant adjutant-general who can't tell where the commanding general's headquarters are. Now, answer my question!"

Somehow I felt that much depended on this, and looked wildly around at the house-tops.

"There isn't any," said Colonel Cromwell, quietly.

"Any what?" I was startled at this style of conversation, and uttered the first words that came into my head.

"Any flag. That's what you are looking for."

What a man! How did he find that out? I began to be frightened. Suddenly, a thought struck me. My desperation made me bold, and I turned upon my questioner as I have heard it said some naturally timid animals do upon their pursuers under similar circumstances.

"There it is," I said, boldly, pointing to a cupola painted of a delicate pistache color, and visible, in what seemed the centre of the town, over all the other roofs.

"Sure?"

"No, sir; but I think so."

"Well, that will do for a beginner; but the next time you must be sure. Young assistant adjutant-generals must never think; we keep them to know things. How did you guess?"

I was encouraged by my success to tell the literal truth. "Because that seems to be the largest and finest house in the town."

"Good!" the colonel exclaimed. "Excellent, young gentleman! The largest and best house is the general's headquarters; the most comfortable one is the quartermaster's; in the quietest you'll find the commissary's; look for the medical director in the most unhealthy, and you can't go wrong."

As he stopped, I ventured to inquire where the adjutant-general's office was most likely to be found.

"Oh, anywhere! Any place that's convenient for everybody except the adjutant-general. No matter about him. If he don't like it, why was he a mule ?"


http://books.google.com/books?id=faw...11&output=text

[106th PVI]

Re: Officer Impression: Accomodations

Michael,
We are not operating as if it were the end of the Gettysburg Campaign. Our premise is to teach about how a Corp HQ would work. Our camp is adhering to park rules I suppose. When I was with the Mifflin Guard we always operated as a regiment on the march when setting up at the Pa Monument... ie: very minimal canvas. We are doing the same this time except with a Corp HQ.

Dean

[Pvt Schnapps]

Re: Officer Impression: Accomodations

I apologize if I got confused.

It just occurred to me that you might want to look at the Library of Congress site, in the Prints and Photographs section and see what they have under "headquarters." Here are a couple of examples:

AOP HQ, Fairfax Court House:

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/I?ils:5:./temp/~pp_GufI::displayType=1:m856sd=cph:m856sf=3c20410:@@@

Bartlett's Divisional HQ in the DC area:

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?ils:39:./temp/~pp_GufI::

I think a full Corps HQ would be fairly large to accommodate not just the staff but the supporting cast of clerks, orderlies, etc., in which case the issue of "going light" would be, as you suggest, relative.

Something that you didn't mention, but which would probably take precedence over the feather tick, trunk, china, and the like would be a desk, table, chairs and a fair amount of stationery supplies such as blanks, books, papers, ink, pens, penholders, pencils, folder, steel eraser, office tape, &c.

You didn't mention what kind of staff officer you were, but whatever department you were in -- QM, Subsistence, Ordnance, Medical, or other, you'd almost certainly have the principal tools of your trade.

[106th PVI]

Re: Officer Impression: Accomodations

Michael,
I am portraying an infantry officer on staff duty. I am assuming that I will be drafting orders, running messages and so on. Maybe keeping the 2d Corp books. I am learning as I go and will find out just what my duties will be when I meet with the general the Friday evening of the event.
I have a period table and field desk with the appropriate papers and manuals. Have to see if they want me to use them.

[Pvt Schnapps]

Re: Officer Impression: Accomodations

My apologies again. OK, I'll stop with the questions.

Just for grins, I meant to add this earlier -- it's not a Corps HQ, but Irwin's description of a departmental headquarters in the Gulf, and it deals not with sleeping but working accommodations:

"Is this the adjutant's office ?" I asked of a slouchy sentinel got up in a pants-in-your-boota style, who, like young Lochinvar, had obviously come out of tho West. No salute to my new shoulder straps. "Yep," gaped private L. curtly, without rising from the wagon bucket whereon he was seated nursing his musket and his right boot like twins.

"G'win, g' right in," he continued, seeing that I hesitated, and was about to go through the, to him, incomprehensible pantomime of knocking against the tent pole.

Lifting the curtain, this tableau discovered itself. Two hospital tents thrown into one. Both full of men in uniform. The front tent a confused group of statues of officers folding papers and waiting for something; seventeen of these. A short, square- built, lean, but not thin, muscular, but not stout, officer standing in the back-ground, almost against the pole that divides the two tents, reading a paper and biting his under lip slowly. Forehead drawn to a focus. Clear gray eyes, a little reddened as by over-strained nerves, intent upon the paper. Dark-brown hair, with a short half-curly warp, needs brushing a very, very little. Ditto the neatly fitting coat. The eighteenth statue is resting his hands alternately on the table that divides him from the last named figure, and talking monotonously while the gray eyes read. From the back tent a dozen clerks produce a scratching notice, occasionally broken by a low whisper, by the planing noise of the lively eraser furtively correcting a mistake, or by the p'too of the tobacco spitter.

I don't know what I like more about this -- the virtually unique description of an office in the field, or that last sentence, in which Irwin describes the sound of a 19th century office, the scratching pens and "planing noise" of steel erasers being the moral equivalent of the clacking typewriters of the 20th century and today's surreptitious thumbing of blackberries.

Now, if you could just find a dozen clerks... :)

[106th PVI]

Re: Officer Impression: Accomodations

Never apologize for asking questions... how else will you find things out?

[PogueMahone]

Re: Officer Impression: Accomodations

Never apologize for asking questions... how else will you find things out?

Well, you could always try reading a book and educating yourself, examining images of the subject you wish to learn about or visiting museums and archives to study the original items or documents they have that might assist in developing your understanding of the topic.

Or you could come here and ask questions.

[boreguard]

Re: Officer Impression: Accomodations

Joe you'd have to be the amassador of hospitality If there was such a position here on the forum.

[PogueMahone]

Re: Officer Impression: Accomodations

Dennis,

No one has ever mistaken me for anything but what I am. I have softened over the years and try not to call people names outright. But I never write anything I would not say to someone's face and I always try to tell the truth as I know it to be.

[boreguard]

Re: Officer Impression: Accomodations

I know your credentials, that's why you'd be the man for the job ! ;)

[106th PVI]

Re: Officer Impression: Accomodations

I do read books and accounts. Just the ones I find don't mention much about the material details. I am currently re-reading "The Right Hand of Command". Also, "The 1862 Army Officer's Pocket Companion". Haven't found much in the way of accounts yet. That is why I am asking you gentlemen for advice.

[Pvt Schnapps]

Re: Officer Impression: Accomodations

In lieu of The Right Hand of Command, which deals more with personal staffs, I'd like to suggest a book that I learned about through the late Mr. Heath, Buff Facings and Gilt Buttons. Although this deals with staff work in the ANV, it's a much better description of headquarters operations in general than The Right Hand.

You can find excerpts on Google Books: http://books.google.com/books?id=fJP...d+buff+facings

Although you initially asked about camping accommodations, I'm beginning to think that perhaps you and the rest of the 2nd Corps HQ set-up might benefit from a consideration of how you will present to the public the actual work that a Corps headquarters had to do.

In addition to being a large fighting force, the Corps is a massive government operation. You're looking at 10-20,000 men, half that many mules and horses, ordnance and camp and garrison equipage worth millions, lives worth millions in replacement costs and bounty balances, &c. &c. The operation is huge, the management is onerous, and the work is highly detailed, involving all the various bureaux of the War Department just in property management, much less in actual movement and fighting. I'm a little concerned that your role hasn't been explained to you yet. It's really not something that, if properly done, one can pick up the evening before.

The few times I've done staff work I've spent quite a few hours over the orders and the appropriate blanks and other equipment. Sleeping arrangements came in a distant second. For the end purposes of the living history, it really doesn't matter whether you have a water bed and a hookah in your tent (though actually, I suppose you could find 19th century precedents for both). But it does matter whether or not you can explain to the public what was actually involved in running this great organization.

You have the privilege of sleeping on the one of the decisive battlefields of the epic war of American history, and of presenting yourself as one of the leadership of a great force on that battlefield.

Mr. Smotherman and I argue about a lot of things, including the tone of his reproaches, but I join him in hoping you study up for this, because it's not something anyone else can convey in a few Forum posts.

I've done a little work on clerking (http://www.authentic-campaigner.com/...ead.php?t=9874), which I hope you may find useful as a starting point. Hopefully your Corps commander has some sources, too. But, as Pogue said in so many words, you still have some heavy lifting. Good luck, and I sincerely hope it works out for you.

[erik]

Re: Officer Impression: Accomodations

U.S. Plate?
Feather bed?
You will give us staff officers a BAD NAME.
Please lose these sorry reminders of comfort.
The staff officer if seconded from his regiment would arrive with what regulations and pocket would allow.
If you go to the extreme then where is the wagon or position on staff to allow it?
Cot? What kind of cot? Wooden or iron?
The officer's impression demands much research, which we are all doing, as it is the last thing being done in the arena.
If you possess a plate stamped US and your name is not Ulyseus Sherman, lose it quickly.

Erik Simundson

Snake, chicken? Your choice not mine.

[106th PVI]

Re: Officer Impression: Accomodations

Erik,
I have a plain tin plate and I can't use the feather bed anyway... too big for my wooden cot. Never would I give a bad name to anyone...