Salt Lake evening Democrat. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1885-1887, 1885-04-28
TO THE FRONT In A PULLMAN.
me- SAAsht Difherence in the Trans
p0rtatiOn OF Canadian ana
American Recruits.

Recruits for the Canadian war in tho
Northwest are being sent to the front in
fullman cars" says dispatch in ono Of
1he papers. Soldiers in Pullman cars
1ruiy, war is robbed of its glory when
soldiers start for the seat of war in sncb
luxury. III must be an interesting sight
10 see carload of soldiers disrobe for
tne night III Pullman car, and roll into
Ine clean sheets OF the berths, and sleen
an night, have their boots BACKED nv
the porter, get up in the morning and
WASH IN toilet room, and 90 to a dining-
car Tor Their breakfast. A soldier wouid
pe spoiled Tor active service who started
out that way. 1t was different DURING orr
war, Is there any gentleman within the
SOUND OF our voice who was ever on \
Tram with load of recruits on the way TO
the 'front.', any time after 1862? If so
ne remembers that the bows did NOT
retlre on downy beds the night he trav-
eled with them. Gracious, but don't
we remember the train-load of recruits
that left Madison in the spring of 1859
The first soldier that got in the car
kicked two windows out. stuck his head
out OF the hole, and called the captain of
MS company bald-headed old guthoo-
tenant in the car to snatch the recruit
bald-headed, and the officer was, sci zed
by the back of the neck and pants and
showed through the window onto the
depot platform so quick he didn't know
what his salary was, and the broken GLASS
tore his new coat off. The cars were
loaded, and-so were the soldiers. The
most OF them were full of beer and
nhnnGn No
ripped up seats, kicked over the stove
and pulled the bell-rope after the train
got started, and scared the conductor so
he had fits, by firing revolvers with
blanks at the roof of the car o, it was
a picnic. No discipline, no nothing, but
beer. The boys would sing and dance,
and If an officer showed up some one
would hit him on the neck with a hay
ersack full of hard tack, and if he got
mad they would lay him down in the
aisle and set upon him. No Off
Ger would come in the car with the bows
unless he could do as they did, and howl.
Going through Chicago it took four
guards to watch each soldier, to keep him
from straying away and taking in the
town, and getting left. After leaving
Chicago anybody who tried to camp
down in a seat and sleep was court mar
tailed and shot in the neck with the cork
from bottle. 1t was wild Three days
later those boys that were so kitteny
went into a fight, and how they did fight
There was discipline enough then. The
officers that had been treated so disre-
spectfully on starting from home were
looked up to as though they were en-
perors, every order was obeyed, and
there was no more monkey work from
that hour. The fellow who kicked ont
the car window led a charge on a breast
work, and Drained with his musketa con-
federate who was going to shoot the cap
tain he had called a bald-headed gut
hoogen four days before. The fellows who
left Wisconsin so full of beer that their
back teeth were afloat had got over having
fun, and were taking in the reality, and
they were the best soldiers that ever
lived. They did not go to the front in a
Pullman car, but many of them came
back in Pullman cars, as officers of high
rank, years later some came back by eX-
press, in boxes, and some of them never
came back at all, but are lying in rows a
little distance from Chattanooga, in the
National Cemetery, with head stones
above them, some marked with their
names, others marked unknown" but
all waiting for Gabriel to play the
Assembly on his bugle at the last great
day. A few weeks ago we saw the graves
of some Of the boys who went to the front
that day from Madison, in the cars that
were ventilated by kicking the windows
out, and we felt that if the boys had not
drank the beer that day and had high
old time, they never would have got
chance, and we didn't blame them bit.
Going to war now is different.-Peck's
Sun. I