Staying warm

[hireddutchcutthroat]

Re: Staying warm

Does anyone know how often ponchos and gum blankets were used by Confederate soldiers in the AOT? Many of you have mentioned using them while sleeping but I have been reluctant to do so in the past because I don't know of Confederate use of them. Information would be much obliged. Thanks.

Pvt. Chris Anderson
5th Geo. Infantry

I believe the AoT had orders for men to pair up and one man to carry a blanket and one man to carry a ground cloth (rubber painted cloth etc.)


Unfortunatly my ORs, are 500 miles away so I cannot give an exact quote or time frame for this practice. :cry_smile

[Skeet]

Re: Staying warm

Many years of campaigning I would say Charles summed it up to a tee! I would say that If your worried about spooning, you won't be if it get's down to the 20's! Bully, Cpl Dan Morgan 10thVA(IVR)

[aplreenactor]

Re: Staying warm

[QUOTE=GaReb]My main problem when in the field is staying warm. I have 2 Keagy-Noble U.S. blankets, and an Anderson Dry Goods quilt and even if I put all of them on I still can't stay warm! I don't know what my problem is, so do any of y'all know a way to stay warm when campaigning?


Try sleeping on more insulation such as pine boughs or pine needles made into a "matress" of sorts......or steal hay from the cavalry!

Andrew P. Lawrence

[Charles Heath]

Re: Staying warm

Happy campers,

Danger, danger, I'm going to get slightly off topic for a moment.

Back in the late 1960s to mid 1970s, we kids enjoyed primitive camping in the Blue Ridge Mountains and Piedmont of Virginia and North Carolina. Spent a lot of time in the woods in all sorts of good, bad, and ugly weather. One can learn less is more when one totes it all on his back. Some of those lessons still apply, although the equipment used was different than that of the CW era. Sleeping outside is still sleeping outside. It's not that big of a deal.

One of the numerous lost articles I wish I could find was a light hearted piece Ed Kirsch, Dave Born, and I worked on back in the early summer of 1998. It started out as a conversation about reproduction Boy Scout Manuals. Between the three of us, we took the older BSA books, Capt. Marcy's fine opus, and a couple of 19th century and early 20th century camping guides, CW letters and journals, and had some fun with tips, tricks, and what "was" conventional wisdom. The job was to trace back It's funny, but between HT&C and Si Klegg, a heck of a lot of campaigning knacks are covered. I'm pretty sure that's when hip holes came back in style, but period writings do mention digging out for the hips. The article made the rounds and is long gone. While we won't be reconstructing that article in my lifetime, it's useful to point out a number of campers and pioneer type writers did leave behind a trail of useful hints as to how to sleep. Marcy's Prairie Traveler is online, and a fun read. Part of the fun in the hobby is going back to read about that "new idea" only to learn it was something old, tried, and true, well before the war.

I notice the young fellow mentioned his group sleeps on cots in tents. One of the best ways to stay miserably cold at night is to sleep on a cot in a tent or unheated building. Ever notice how a number of old rope beds had a skirt around them in the winter to keep the breeze from blowing under the occupant? Cots work the same way. Skip the cot, and sleep on the ground or floor using that ground cloth as a vapor barrier in damp weather.

Part of the problem is the expectation of a comfy night's sleep in a nice warm bed. Some folks like a house that is hot in the winter. The expectatations for sleeping outside should be different. Expect to be cooler, more damp, and hear more things going bump in the night, unless you are at an event with Frank Aufmuth, and then expect it to be so hot during the night that the chickens practially cook themselves. Shivering, BTW, is normal, especially if you go to bed soaking wet from sweat. It's your body warming up via friction, and not a big deal. If you put your mind to it, you can sleep in a variety of crazy places. Once you've slept soundly in a mudhole or a ditch or in the pouring rain, you can do it again and again. The boys enjoying a nice thunderstorm Saturday night at the Antietam LH in 2003 shared about the same conditions as the lads in the copse of trees on the knoll at Perryville with the 105th Ohio on a rainy Friday night in 2001. Ever notice one of the first few things people do when the army stops for the day in late afternoon is to peel off clothing and turn wet garments inside out to dry in the sun?

Keep your head covered, and off the ground. A wool scarf and a cartridge box work find for this. Spoon if you can. Not only does the body heat add up, but so do the shared layers of blankets. It works. Just do it.

Bill,

"I did that at Averasboro and woke up to find Charles Heath stamping out a flaming shelter half on my greatcoat."

That was Tiny Grimes was the convenient berm on which to beat out the flames. You were on the other side of a tree in the shelter tent, to set a fish tale straight. Tim Kindred was on fire watch when that "Bouncing Betty" yellow pine knot burst above the shelter half being used as dew cover, and I'm glad he was there sitting by the fire about half awake. The funny part is that was the second time that mildewed blue-line shelter half caught on fire, the first being at a picket post event, so I sold it figuring it was jinxed. It may still be in use, although I haven't heard of the current owner catching fire. What kept me from burning was the old fed issue wool blanket. A wool blanket, as Curt pointed out, wool scorches far wider than it burns (why safety catalogs still feature wool fire blankets), so it has two or three small patches from a similar blanket run. Repaired items can yield the nice interpretive effect of a passage of time in a sea of just-off-the-shelf goods.

Anyway, a good number of these lessons are learned and relearned at campaign events and not necessarily at campaign style events. I sure wouldn't want to tote three blankets.

Charles Heath
ZZZzzzzzzz

[Pharr]

Re: Staying warm

The problem with using a quilt is that they'll absorb any moisture, even from a light dew, and really add to you weight load where as a good wool blanket will shed that moisture. Once that quilt gets damp it will likely be damp when you roll it out the next night.

[Bill]

A good number of years ago I attended a campaign event at Cedar Creek. It was very cold and no fires were allowed . I found a spot where dry leaves had piled up along side of a road. I crawled into that pile of leaves and was quite comfortable all night. It was both a soft and warm sleeping place.