Unless you need your musket for morning roll...

Quote :

GrumpyDave wrote : Unless you need your musket for morning roll...

I have been doing this a year now, I just want to live the life of a soldier in the CW, and do it right!

No really. All of the manuals require at least 3 roll call's per day and, at each you need to show up in you acouterments with your weapon. So, you'd have to tear up your shelter at "tatoo" and at "Revele." Using your musket for a pole is a good idea when you've been marching, stop to sleep and will begin marching again the next day. Otherwise, if it's not going to rain, why build a shelter?

I often wonder how many times the boys of 186x left on the march with dew soaked blankets, shelters and gum blankets.

So all the pictures I have seen of two soldiers putting their halfs together, and using their muskets for poles had to be taken down for roll call?  

--Last edited by yellowhammer on 2007-02-12 12:56:27 --

Quote :

GrumpyDave wrote : No really. All of the manuals require at least 3 roll call's per day and, at each you need to show up in you acouterments with your weapon. So, you'd have to tear up your shelter at "tatoo" and at "Revele." Using your musket for a pole is a good idea when you've been marching, stop to sleep and will begin marching again the next day. Otherwise, if it's not going to rain, why build a shelter? I often wonder how many times the boys of 186x left on the march with dew soaked blankets, shelters and gum blankets.

Remember one thing, there are the Regulations and there is the Army.

If you've set up for the evening and your NCO/Officer allows it, the requirement to show up at roll call with your weapon might well be ignored. If you are a private, it pays to stay flexible.

I'm sure the real soldiers had to pack up wet gear plenty of times. I've done it often enough as a reenactor. In my various military careers, I've had to leave a frozen dog tent behind twice. The first time at Fort Bragg, NC and a second time at Nashville, TN. In both cases, we went back in the afternoon to pick up our abandoned tents, after they had time to melt.    

No you aren't we tore up the tracks yesterday so they now don't go anywhere.

But really if you're on the march, and your company is setting up for the night, and is camped in a woods and you don't have a pard, then it is probably about right.

And if you're not in the presence of the enemy then that's a consideration to.

While I've seen this done by reenactors and it fits army regs I have a sneaking suspicion that no Yankee who survived Shiloh never again was in a situation where his musket wasn't available at a moments notice.