Mud cant be THAT bad...

[Western Blue Belly]

This story reminds me of many “the fish that got away” tales told by folks around the globe. Here’s a great example from Texas Ranger Dutch Hoffmann that the sarcastic nature of the human race and the exaggeration of events for the amusement of others has remained unchanged through history. Although many letters of this kind can be found this one made me laugh and I thought it worth sharing. In some of his writings and letters pertaining to the movements and actions of Johnston through Tennessee, Hoffmann writes (in a wonderful humorists style) about the spring thaw and the effects of it. The rather lengthy but very humorous letter is addressing simply “Dear D”.


April 4,1862
somewhere north of Corinth, Mississippi


“…Oh, glorious springtime! The last cold and frosty traces of Old Man Winter are being melted away by the sweet warm breath of Mother Nature as she whispers the word "Spring." The birds are singing their lilting songs, and the trees are beginning to leaf out in dozens of delicate shades of green. But while we are celebrating all these wonders of nature, let's not forget about the MUD! I think I have experienced every variety it has to offer. brown mud, red mud, gray mud, black mud, wet mud, dry mud, and suck-your-shoe-off-your-foot mud. mud all over my pants and boots, mud in my food, and mud in my water. My blankets are so stiff and caked with dried mud that I can throw them across a streambed and walk across them without even getting wet! I've seen mud so deep that guns sink to their axles, mules completely disappear, and entire columns of men vanish without a trace. Why, just the other day I found a solitary musket stuck straight up in the mud alongside the road and when I tried to pull it out, I found an infantryman attached to it! He wryly informed me that he was just using it to mark his place until his comrades returned with a rope to extract him.”

[DougCooper]

Actually, I have seen some mud that fits the description - especially the "pull your shoes off" variety and axle deep variety. Comrade Charles Pinkhim had his gunboats pulled off at Murfreesboro (Mudfreezeboro I think we called it) one year - they already had so much mud on them you would have sworn they were snow shoes. Made a peculiar sucking sound. We spent quite some time trying to remove the mud from everything, especially trousers, shoes and rifle butts. BGR had several varieties of mud, from brown to light gray (clay). Had I had more time to dawdle, I am sure we could have built ourselves a first rate chimney on a pine hut and rested out the war in repose, instead of chasing Sorchy and the Yankees to hell and gone...

[Charles Heath]

Makes a man want to raise a glass to the likes of MacAdam, Telford, Metcalfe, and Crozet.

[Kevin O'Beirne]

From John Tobey's CRRC2 chapter regarding Federal infantry on the march (I'll claim credit for providing the long quote below :) ):

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Deep mud was a problem when the weather had been rainy for a long period of time and the army churned up the usually soft-bottomed roads into a sucking morass. Marching through such goo could be extremely fatiguing, and numerous soldiers wrote humorous descriptions of traipsing through it; one such description forms the title of this article, as Warren Lee Goss wrote, “The army resembled, more than anything else, a congregation of flies making a pilgrimage through molasses.” (source: Goss, Warren Lee, Recollections of a Private, New York: Thomas Cromwell & Co. 1890, p. 23)

The surgeon of the 69th New York National Guard Artillery regiment [which served as infantry] wrote of an exceptionally muddy night march in late January, 1863, near Suffolk, Virginia:

“At first some would try and pick up their steps, but they came to the conclusion that they might as well wade right through it, and in some parts of that road, half mud, half river, the mud was up the poor fellows’ waists; even those on horseback suffered, and several horses got stuck so badly as to require assistance to get them out. I am rather surprised that the General did not bring one of those gunboats with legal draft, for I am sure they could get along. Several of the soldiers lost their boots, and trudged along the remainder of the journey barefoot. Such are the glories of war.” (source: Dwyer, John (“J.D.”), Irish American newspaper, New York City NY, February 14, 1863)

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[Hank Trent]

Why, just the other day I found a solitary musket stuck straight up in the mud alongside the road and when I tried to pull it out, I found an infantryman attached to it! He wryly informed me that he was just using it to mark his place until his comrades returned with a rope to extract him.”[/I]

That sounds like a military variation on the old joke about the hat. It was published all over, but here's a version from 1822:

A traveller, on his return from the State of Ohio, where he had been to purchase a farm in that "land of milk and honey," gave this account of the state of promise:--"Sir, as I was driving my team, I observed a hat in the path, and reached my whipstick to take it from the mud." "What are you doing with my hat?" cried a voice under it. I soon discovered under the chapeau a brother emigrant, up to his ears in the mud. "Pray let me help you out," said I. "Thank you," said the bemired traveller, "I have a good long-legged horse under me, who has carried me through worse sloughs than these. I am only stopping to breath my nag; as this is the firmest footing I have found in fifty miles."

Hank Trent
hanktrent@voyager.net

[JustRob]

Talk to anyone who was at 135th Shiloh. That was some mud of epic proportions. It took clean off your feet, and I was in mud up to my calves.

[JimKindred]

Good point, we still have all the original material down here to make mud like that, all we need is a very good rain for about a week. :)

[Charles Heath]

... I was in mud up to my calves.

Jumped in head first again? :D