Hey Soldier, Where You Goin’ To Sleep Tonight?
By Phil McBride
If you
are at a reenactment and your lovely wife asks that question, “Not with you,” would be a good
answer. If that reply seems a tad rude
and an invitation to a cold shoulder when you get home, I’m sorry, boys, but
soldier up. Maybe you can do some extra honey-do’s to win your way back into
her good graces. On the other hand, if one of your smelly mess mates asks the
question, “With you, of course,” may
be a very good answer.
Sleeping
arrangements really can be a big question at reenactments, strange as that
seems on the surface. One of the first issues to be resolved is where the
civilian reenactors sleep. In my battalion, and in all the good reenacting
groups I see, civilians, meaning wives and families, pitch their tents at a
separate site from the military camp. The civilian camp can be close, but the
separation is distinct, intentional and consistent. I know that for some
reenacting groups the term “family friendly” means a joint camp and husbands
and wives in the same tent. That may be friendly, but it is wrong and not in
the spirit of reenactments being weekend depictions of Civil War soldiering.
Given that
military reenactors will sleep without the comforts of their sweethearts’
presence, just how and where will the weekend soldiers bed down? Within my own
company, I can expect that one guy will sleep snugly on the fold-down bed in
his van in the parking lot, while others will always be found at dawn curled
around the ashes of the company cook fire. These hardy fellows will be cocoons
in blankets, having shivered through the wee hours if it was a cold night. One
or two other men may have brought folding cots to use in their tents, with
blankets hiding a foam pad or the metal frame of their cot. Injuries, aging,
and a yearning for comfort drive the cot crew. But most of us will be on the
ground, maybe with a layer of hay under our rubber blankets for padding and a
little more insulation from mother earth. Most of the men in our group will
also be under canvas.
“Under
canvas” generally means in a tent or maybe under a canvas fly set up to create
a homemade shelter. So, which of all these choices is really the right choice?
Once again, “It depends,” is the answer, with the exception of sleeping in the
van. That’s a wrong choice. But then again, if the van is in the parking lot
away from camp, I suppose it’s a no-harm, no-foul choice, if that’s what it
takes to keep a guy at a reenactment.
The
“where to sleep” question is most often answered one of three ways: Under the
stars and clouds, or in a wedge tent – also called an A-frame tent, or under two
shelter halves buttoned together – also called a shelter tent or dog tent. Yes,
there are situations where a large wall tent could be appropriate for a higher
ranking officer’s headquarters tent, or a large round Sibley tent would be
appropriate for up to a platoon of soldiers at a living history program. The period images of the large Federal tent
cities include all sorts of tents. Nonetheless, for most of us, wedge tents or shelter
half tents are the two correct options if we want canvas overhead; and our reenacting
camps reflect those choices. Every reenactment military camp I’ve seen has been
a mixture of wedge and shelter half tents, usually with mostly wedge tents
lining the company street.
On a
personal level, I’m a fan of sleeping under the stars as my first choice, then
in a shelter half tent as a second choice, and in a wedge tent as a fall-back
in wet weather. It’s a fact that sustained rain changes everything when
camping. I imagine we all have had reenacting weekends ruined by rain, and a
good wedge tent can be an event-saver. It’s also safe to say that a company
street lined with several wedge tents on each side gives a great military
appearance. Wedge tents are also practical as they can sleep up to four men and
provide hidden storage for ice chests and the modern packing bags and boxes that
always seem to appear in camp. Wedge
tents are tall enough to stand upright to change clothes and wide enough that
the edges of blankets don’t usually get pushed outside and get wet.
Like most
other essential tools we use as reenactors, tents can be bought from several
different places. There is no one sutler or company
that has cornered the market for Civil War tents with an exceptional product or
exceptional pricing. Yet, unfortunately, like some of the other items we use
(muskets come to mind), the tents available for sale are not exactly right.
None of the five brands I’ve checked produce a wedge tent made to the
dimensions set forth by the US Army during the Civil War for a common wedge
tent: 6'10" long, 8'4" wide and 6'10" tall. The reproductions can get close in
size, but not spot on. Maybe that doesn’t matter for a couple of reasons.
First, many of us have opted for tents that are both longer, at 9 feet or more,
and have door flaps at both ends, unlike the real McCoys.
The extra two feet of length allows space for more men, or space for the camp
boxes and ice chests we bring, things the real Civil War soldiers did not have.
As to the back door flaps, I
reenact in the south where any cool wind is usually most welcomed. At my first
reenactment when I was a green recruit, I bought a wedge tent with the backdoor
flaps instead of a solid canvas wall at the back, and while the flaps make the
tent even less authentic, I still enjoy the flow-through breeze the back flaps allows.
I also should mention that my tent does not have inside ties, so I cannot roll
and tie up the back or front flaps. I can only drape them on the outside top of
the tent, and any little wind will bring them down. Some tent makers do include
inside ties, and back flaps or not, I would not buy another tent without inside
ties so the flaps can be rolled up.
There
may also be a second reason that none of the makers of reproduction tents
produce wedge tents of the exact dimensions of the Quartermaster Department
specifications. We reenactors are heavier and taller than the real Civil War
soldiers, so like many of those who make reproduction uniforms, I suspect the
tent makers have upsized a bit to accommodate our girth and height.
Confederate wedge tent dimensions are
hazy, like most Confederate war supplies. Since the South simply replicated US
standards in much of their equipment, the US Quartermaster tent specifications
likely were used in the Confederacy as well. But the Confederacy was remarkably
adept at making do with what they had, and I suspect that wedge tents produced
in southern states varied greatly, and probably shrunk in size to stretch the
supply of canvas.
The actual Civil War era tent
specifications also included “sod flaps,” which are rather ingenious strips of
canvas sewn all the way around the edge of the tent and are to be folded under
the inside of the tent with gum blankets or ground clothes overlapping them. These sod flaps can effectively prevent cold
wind coming under the tent and even forestall the creep of flooding during
heavy rain. The sod flaps cost extra on reproduction tents, but if I were
buying a new wedge tent, I’d fork over the extra bucks. Just one night saved
from a soggy blanket or frigid wind would more than pay for the difference.
Now the
first shoe drops: While wedge tents are practical and preferred by most of us
reenactors, shelter tents (dog tents), made from two shelter halves buttoned
together are what Federal reenactors should be sleeping under at almost all of
our reenactments, if we cared to do it right. The case for shelter tents instead
of wedge tents is simple: Civil War armies on campaign when camped within
fighting reach of each other usually were not accompanied by their wagon trains
where the wedge tents were stored. Instead, most Federal soldiers each carried
a shelter half, two of which were combined to make a shelter tent. The shelter
halves were folded and packed into knapsacks. They were lightweight canvas with
hand-sewn button holes and corner holes for stake ropes to be attached. A ridge
pole was not needed when the tent was stretched tight by short guy ropes tied
to the front and rear upright poles. Upright poles could be made from freshly
cut saplings, could be two-part dowel rod poles issued to the men and carried
across the top of their packs, or even two muskets upended and held vertical by
bayonets pushed into the ground. The six tent stakes needed could be quickly
cut from small branches or jointly carried by the two men who each carried half
the tent.
The
downside of shelter tents is they are short and narrow, barely five feet square
and have no front or rear flap. No doubt enterprising soldiers sometimes draped
gum blankets over one end, or butted one end of the mini-tent up against a big
rock, a tree trunk, or thick brush. Regardless of the soldiers’ cleverness protecting
one end of the shelter tent, two men in one small shelter tent in the rain or
north wind were likely to wake up wet or cold, in spite of their canvas roof or
spooning through the night with shared blankets and shared body warmth.
We see photos
of brush arbors in the real photos of Civil War camps, and there are images of
shelter halves set up as lean-to’s or even constructed
into larger canvas shebangs. Our company often builds
canvas shebangs at events where the battalion camps
campaign style. Three or four connected shelter halves tied off to trees and
upright branches with one side left open can make a comfortable cave for
several men.
Shelter
halves are what many Civil War soldiers carried on campaign, and what we really
should be using. My experience is that ninety percent of the time, a shelter
tent is fine, if a little close. But the ten percent of the time when a lasting
rain hits the reenactment, or a frigid wind is blowing, you can expect a soggy
and frosty time of it.
Now the
other shoe drops: Confederate reenactors probably should not even be carrying
shelter halves to make a shelter tent while replicating a campaign bivouac. The
real old boys would have been sleeping under the sky with no canvas. Not only
would the wagon trains carrying the wedge tents not be close by, but the
Confederacy appears to have issued very few shelter tents. Men carried what
they could scrabble together. Maybe a man would have a piece of canvas, or a piece
of an old rug, or a gum blanket, but often it was nothing at all beyond their
wool blanket. No doubt they got very
wet, very cold, and very sick. No doubt they spooned together and huddled
around the fires. No doubt they burrowed their way up under whatever brush was
close by.
We may
think being on a week or even month long campaign without shelter was a
terrible hardship, when seen through our 21st century filtered lenses
of what is hardship. Yet, we should keep in mind that these soldiers grew up in
an outdoor society and most traveled by foot in their civilian lives. Traveling
any distance beyond ten miles required overnight camping, and you can bet many
of these young men had slept many nights under the stars – and clouds – before
the war. Tents would have been a luxury many of them would never have afforded
or used.
There it
is: No tent, little tent, wedge tents. This is another case that to best live for a weekend as a Civil War soldier on campaign, less
is best. Bigger may be more comfortable, but it’s not as correct.