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December 16th.
Tattoo is now beating and blowing throughout all the
camps of our corps—distant, feeble strains from the drum
and bugles of other corps, more remote, leaking in now
and then through an interval in the nearer din. Reveille,
Retreat and Tattoo divide the soldier's day into three
unequal periods, by a roll call and gush of martial music.
Retreat is the least notable of the three in a musical point
of view, being short, and usually merged with the Dress
Parade, as part of that sun-down ceremony. It is at
Reveille and Tattoo that drums, fifes and bugles delight
to emulate each other, and surpass themselves. On the
march, the hours for these calls are uniform. In camp,
each regiment or brigade fixes its own time. In the
former case, the soldier's dreams are abruptly drowned
in a sudden and overwhelming torrent of tenor drums,
brass drums, bass drums, cavalry bugles, artillery
trumpets, and ear-piercing fifes, coming up from all
quarters, under the morning star and the pale waning
moon, in a very Niagara of noise. Simultaneously as it
breaks out, so it ceases. With its last note begins the
hurried call of the roll by the Orderly Sergeant, from
memory,—the company lines already formed—an unwashed
company officer looking on apart — and then
almost as suddenly as if by magic, hundreds of weird
camp fires throw a ruddier glow into the face of the dawn,
around each of which flit a dozen hungry forms, stooping
over a tin cup of boiling coffee, or toasting a savory slice
of fat pork on the end of a stick. Before many minutes,
an orderly, sometimes a staff officer, gallops up to brigade
head-quarters, from which immediately is heard the bugle
call to "Fall in!" "Fall in," bawl the colonels, with
mouths full of hard-tack. "Fall in," echo the captains
in a fierce, bustling manner; and "fall in" it is, on all
sides,—the lazy ones scalding their throats with a last
gulp at the tin cup before it is hitched to the haversack,
where, during a long laborious day's march it is to jingle
and tinkle monotonously against the canteen. Knapsacks
are slung with a convulsive movement of frame,
which wrenches out some expression of a character offensive
to ears polite. The line is formed, by the touch of
the elbow only, if not yet light. If it is our good luck to
be the advance regiment, we move off, directly after the
brigade standard; otherwise we wait till the column
moves by, to take our place in it. If still too dark to
see, guided by the tramp, the hum, and the clink, so we
march in the raw, frosty dawn; and sun-rise finds us five
miles perhaps from where we heard the reveille.
But in a sedentary camp, as I said before, there is no
uniform and precise moment fixed for these calls to begin:
and so the strain is heard passing from regiment to regiment,
and from camp to camp, any time during an hour.
Now is the opportunity for individualities to be developed.
Now is heard a fashionable drum-corps, performing scientifically
in a modern, Frenchy, tasty style, after the most
approved pattern. Walks in upon this performance, and
virtually suppresses it, a ponderous, old-fashioned bass-
drum affair, reminding one of fishing-club excursions or
militia musters. Fifes are now pitted against each other
in fiercest rivalry. Choicest morceaux from some favorite
opera delight the ear for awhile, when suddenly their toes
are trodden upon by "Villikins and his Dinah," or "Rory
O'Moore," squeaked out from some neighboring camp,
and then they plaintively subside into, "When this cruel
war is over." Ever and anon is heard amid this conflict
of melodies, some of the good old marching tunes which
carried our fore-fathers, bare-footed, through the Revolution;
some which cheered the soldiers of Marlborough, in
Flanders; some which did duty so long ago as the days
of Gustavus Adolphus, the father of the art of war. It
is when beating to such music, that drum-sticks oftenest
forget themselves, and become enthusiastic, and even
fanatical in their energy.
Our Country, in Its Relations to the Past, Present and Future: A National ...
by Mrs Lincoln Phelps - 1864
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