Note 2 — Chapter IV

As the reader may not be aware of the weight each rifleman had to carry during this long and harassing march, this too by men considered the lightest troops in our service, they are as follows: Knapsack and straps, two shirts, two pair of stockings, one pair of shoes, ditto soles and heels, three brushes, box of blacking, razor, soap-box and strap, and also at the time an extra pair of trowsers, a mess-tin, centre-tin and lid, haversack and canteen, great coat and blanket, a powder-flask filled, a ball bag containing thirty loose balls, a small wooden mallet used to hammer the ball into the muzzle of our rifles; belt and pouch, the latter containing fifty rounds of ammunition, sword-belt and rifle, besides other odds and ends, that at all times are required for a service-soldier. Each squad had also to carry four bill-hooks, that weighed six pounds each, so that every other day each man had to carry it; thus equipped, with from seventy to eighty pounds weight, this too in the melting month of July. Not content with the above, the General gave strict orders for each man to have his canteen filled with water before commencing the day’s march every morning. Through being thus overloaded, four hundred of the battalion died a few months after our arrival, without a single shot being fired. But the survivors soon found out the cause of this mortality, as I don’t think there was a man in the regiment five years after, before we left the country, could show a single shirt or a pair of shoes in his knapsack.