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3 Years in The Army
DRILLING
Col. Daniel Chaplin, the Commander of our Regiment, was a military man, a veteran and an excellent Drill Master. After all the special details had been made for the day, there remained about 100 men for drill, 2 hours in the forenoon and two hours in the afternoon. In the forenoon the drilling was by company by the Commanding officer, generally the Captain. In the afternoon it was by Regiment by the Commanding officer, generally the Colonel, this was called Battalion drill. Our Captain Harrison G. Smith was a nice clever man but not much interested in military matters, and did not give much of his time to study, so he did not enjoy the drilling business very well, so he would put the job over to Lieut. Newingham when he could find some excuse for doing so, but of course he could not play that on the Colonel very often as he expected the officers to be well drilled as well as the rest of the company. There was a large cleared field not far from the fort. It was not quite level but nearly so after being smoothed up a little it made a very good drill ground. Well Captain Smith would march the company on to that field and form us into line at the North west corner. Then the order would be "Company Right Wheel". He would then place himself in proper position Six paces in front of the center then the order would be, "Forward March" to the Southwest corner, then "Left Wheel" to the Northeast corner, then Left Wheel to the Northwest corner, this brought us back to where we started |