Chapter 4

1866: Baton rouge

We -- the junior commissioned officers and the non-commissioned officers -- debarked the Delta Duchess at Baton Rouge on Sunday, July eighth. Our assignment was to prepare to receive the regiments’ recruits on July fifteenth. Things did not start off well.

There was a substantial garrison installation at Baton Rouge called Fort Williams. It was built in eighteen-nineteen and had been known, up until eighteen sixty-two, as the Pentagon Barracks, for the shape formed by its four two-story brick buildings, the fifth side left open as the parade access. It was in moderately good repair and could easily accommodate a thousand troops. There was a company of infantry in the garrison being housed there, leaving plenty of room for our planned regiment of about seven hundred men.

However, this was not to be our post.

Instead we were assigned to a former Confederate camp north of Baton Rouge, the site of a battle during The War. It had been burnt to the ground by retreating Rebel soldiers. We were informed that the first assignment of the new regiment would be to build barracks and other structures for the regiment’s permanent headquarters. Until their completion, we were to occupy tents.

The sergeants and corporals spent the next day meeting with company officers, setting platoon assignments. Meanwhile, engineer officers drew up plans for the camp buildings. Following those determinations, the non-commissioned officers assisted the engineers in laying out the arrangement of the temporary tent camp, driving tall stakes to mark various perimeters and pathways, and the alignment of tents.

On July thirteenth, Captain Lange met with Jordie and me to finalize our assignment. We sat in the mess tent after noon chow.

Captain Lange said, “What we’re going to do is add three thirty-man platoons to Company J. Platoons three and four will be scout trainees. Platoon five will be the Indian scouts. It’s expected they’ll be mostly Pawnee, though we won’t know how many nor how many men of other tribes there’ll be until they get here. It could be as few as a half dozen men or even two or three times that. We’ll just have to wait and see.”

He looked at Jordie. “If you want, you can assume the rank of an acting sergeant, though there is no pay increase and it will only be temporary, until the scout cadre is established. It would look good on your record, though.”

“Sure, Cap’n, that’ll be fine. I ‘preciate it, sir.”

He said, “You two will lead platoons three and four. We’ll just have to see about the Indians. They may arrive with their own sergeant or corporal.”

“What about the regular infantrymen coming in from Texas? Will they have any non-coms with them?”

“A few. We’ve included their names in the assignment lists. None of them are scout-snipers.”

“So we’re to use that term, sniper, rather than sharpshooter?” I asked.

“It was felt that sniper better connotes the actual assignment of shooting at something, not simply being an exceptional shooter. As it is now, any soldier who’s an exceptional shot can earn the distinction of being designated a sharpshooter, but only sharpshooters who undergo scout training will be assigned to a scout-sniper role.

“There’s a more important purpose to this change in designation that affects all soldiers.

“It’s been found that, during the war, most infantrymen were firing their weapons without actually aiming at a specific target. Many were not aiming at all, to the point that they had no real idea of where their fired bullets were going, other than in the general direction of the enemy. A goodly number reported routinely firing with their eyes shut.

“The Army wants to emphasize the practice of making every shot a purposely aimed shot, so there is to be an increased emphasis on every soldier’s skill as a rifleman, with suitable designations for demonstrated skill on the practice range.”

“How they gonna do dat?” Jordie asked.

“That hasn’t been decided. Apparently there’s disagreement about the type of shooting that will qualify. Distance is at issue, and the question of replicating shooting performance, as well as shooting positions and the conditions of both the shooter and the firing range. Some want to duplicate the stressful conditions of the battlefield, others want to use more readily comparable shooting conditions.”

“Huh. Never’d thought a’ half those things,” Jordie said.

“Well, the goal is to make all soldiers better marksman, not to discover the best shooters, so it’s markedly different than the process of discovering good scouts. That purpose will remain a separate activity.”

We spent the remainder of the week overseeing the offloading of lumber and other building supplies from riverboats and barges and beginning to move that materiel to the camp.

On Sunday, July fifteenth, the troops and the recruits arrived. It was raining as we distributed shelter halves. The new arrivals would be sleeping in the mud.

Baton Rouge was to serve as the garrisoned headquarters of the Forty-first United States Colored Infantry Regiment. The structures we were building were to have some permanence. The headquarters building itself, the centerpiece of the camp, was to be a two-story building in the Federal style, wood frame on a masonry stone foundation, with numerous windows and prominent shutters. The officers’ quarters were two story matching structures on either side of the headquarters building. Specifically, they were not the pillar-lined, portico-fronted structures typical of so many southern plantation homes and their style was meant to provide a deliberate contrast to the style that was reminiscent of slavery and the southern slave-holding plutocracy. (I was always learning new words from Captain Lange.)

The three main building were situated side-by-side facing the main entry driveway, which bisected a broad parade ground. Behind these three structures were the regimental barracks, and the kitchens, mess halls, equipment buildings, smithies, stables, and sheds. Beyond that were the practice fields and the firing ranges.

The barracks were of post-and-beam construction, all cypress, and were raised two feet above grade. They were clapboard sided and cedar-shingled, with numerous window for light and ventilation, but generally unadorned, save for a coat of whitewash.

Among the seven hundred men were more than six hundred former slaves, many of whom were skilled in all manner of construction, including masonry and bricklaying, let alone a wide range of carpentry skills. The building designs were not particularly complicated, and many tasks could be seen to even by unskilled hands.

The availability of seven hundred motivated laborers made for short work. Within six weeks, the camp was largely complete. Twelve barracks were built, each housing as many as seventy privates, with their two non-commissioned officers sharing a separate office and bunk room. The eleventh barracks was for guest companies, but would initially house the scout training company, or it could be used as a disciplinary barracks. The twelfth barracks were for the Indian scouts.

Seventeen Indian scouts arrived with the regiments from deployment in Texas: Three Caddo, two Cherokee, seven Pawnee, and five Black Seminole.

The Black Seminoles were former slaves and freedmen who had joined the Seminole tribe and had lived with them for years, some having joined them when they were forced to relocate to the Indian Territory in the eighteen thirties and forties. Of that group, a number had escaped to Mexico where they had built a town, all to avoid being enslaved in the Territory. All of the Indian cadre had fought for the Union in The War and all could speak English, or at least army English. The ranking soldier was a Pawnee sergeant, Reeds Water. He told me he used his name in the American manner, with Water as his surname. There was second sergeant, Buffalo Cape, a Cherokee, but he was in the hospital, recovering from dysentery. And there were three corporals: Twin Smith, a Black Seminole, Clay Pipe, a Caddo, and Micah Foxpaw, another Pawnee, all of whom seemed generally interested in fitting into the new regiment.

Jordie and I met with them on Sunday, the second of September. Most of the construction was near completion and we needed to set training plans in motion.

I said, “I want us each to describe our experience, so we know what we have to work with. Then I want to propose a training plan to you.

“I reckon I may as well start. I’m from northwest Ohio, grew up on a farm. I turned eighteen in January of ‘sixty-four and in February I joined a Union scout-sharpshooter platoon in Tennessee, part of the Ohio Fourteenth Infantry Regiment. I saw action in a half-dozen battles in Sherman’s Atlanta campaign. In September ‘sixty-four, I was transferred to the Forty-fourth US Colored Infantry Regiment for the specific purpose of training a scout-sharpshooter platoon and was promoted to corporal. That new scout platoon fought the Rebs at Dalton. We also fought at Johnsonville and Nashville, except that I sat out Nashville with a broken arm We were assigned garrison duty in north Georgia and I was made an acting sergeant and led that scout platoon in bushwhacker interdiction until this past April, when the Regiment was decommissioned. At that time I was recruited for this position and given the permanent rank of sergeant. Jordie, here, was with me from when I joined the Forty-fourth, and has frequently stepped in to assist in training and leadership jobs. He’s had temporary corporal stripes before, and now it’s temporary sergeant’s stripes.”

Grinning, Twin Smith asked, “So whose tail did you step on to get assigned to the Forty-fourth?”

Jordie said, “William Tecumseh Sherman hisself, if you can believe it. The Fourteenth’s commanding general was bragging on our boy here,” he patted my shoulder as I slowly shook my head, “and mentioned that then-private Becker was known as Seneca. Sherman asked why, and the general explained that private Becker had one-quarter Seneca blood. The next day, transfer orders came down from Sherman’s chief of staff. For his good work at soldiering, Seneca here got transferred to the cellar.”

I hadn’t interrupted Jordie since I didn’t want these men to think I was hiding anything from them. I wanted us to be fully honest with one another. But I added, “Could a’ been worse, though. They could a’ transferred me to a guard posting at one of the prisoner-of-war camps.”

“Yeah,” Sergeant Reeds Water said. “I’ve heard that Sherman is quite the bastard when it comes to folks who are not white.”

“Jordie,” I said, “Tells us about yourself.”

He gave me a sour look. “You already told ‘em all the good parts,” he complained. Turning to the others, he said, “I was mostly a field hand in the Carolinas, working tobacky an’ cotton. Ran off when I heard about the ‘Mancipation Proclamation, joined up in Tennessee. Could’a been marched off with the rest of the Forty-fourth when John Bell Hood came through Dalton, ‘cept this farm boy had us out hikin’ ‘round with packs full a’ rocks, so we missed out on that, though we took a nip at the Rebs’ tail ‘as they left. Saw some action after that in various places: Johnsonville, Nashville, northern Alabama, and back in Georgia, mostly lookin’ at his ass,” he bobbed is head toward me, “chargin’ off one place or ‘nother. But this past spring, all on my own, I found my Pap and my little sis, who I ain’t seen since I was twelve. Now I’m sittin’ here wishin’ I was with ‘em again.”

“Reeds?” I said.

“Most times, Indians don’t talk about things like that,” he said.

“But they tell war stories,” I said.

“Well, yeah, but only if it makes ‘em look good.”

“Okay, it’s not my purpose to press you. Let me tell you what I have in mind, then we’ll see where we stand.

“I’ve been training men in scout and sharpshooting skills for most of the past two years, some men who had never fired a rifle before, some men who had been kept purposely ignorant. I had to really think about and plan that training, to break it into pieces that could be understood by men who had no idea of the skills required. At the same time, I suspect you men, and the other Indian scouts, may have been raised with these skills.”

“Where did you learn them?” Twin Smith asked.

I told them about growing up on the farm and hunting with both rifle and bow with my Pa and older brothers and then my years with Uncle Sammie.

I finished with, “What I propose is this: Jordie and I begin to select and train the colored scouts while you four observe, and bring along any of your scouts who you think would know best. Then tell me what we should do different, and we’ll change things as we go along.”

Jordie said, “Tell ‘em how you got the training mapped out.”

So I did, and we talked until lights out.

On Tuesday the following week, at eight in the morning, I was standing on an ammunition crate facing a group of perhaps a hundred sixty soldiers.

I held my hand up and, when things quieted, I announced, “I am Sergeant Judah Becker and I’m the chief scout trainer. I appreciate all you men showing up and I’m gratified by your interest in becoming a scout sniper, what used to be called a scout sharpshooter.

“There are several important qualities that a scout sniper must possess. He must be able to be an exceptional marksman. He must be able to move about undetected. He must be able to assess the lay of the land and the number and movement of the enemy, and be able to clearly report that information to his superiors. For the most part, those skills might be learned. However, there is one requirement that can’t be learned, something that you’re either born with or you’re not, and that is ... exceptional eyesight. There is simply no way around the need for a scout sniper to have eyesight that is well above what most folks possess.”

“What about binoculars?” someone called.

“Binoculars are an aid for seeing detail at a distance, but they are not a substitute for good eyesight. And you can’t sight down a rifle using binoculars.

“Moreover, why would we recruit a scout who needed to use binoculars when we have men who would not need them?”

“‘Cause I’m so good lookin’,” came the voice, to general laughter.

I called, “Excellent. We want men who know how to look good and to report what they looked at.” Not my best comeback, but it got a few chuckles.

“Over on your right, holding his cap in the air, is Sergeant Jordie Tipton, the other trainer. He’s going to mark a dividing line in the group. Those in front will begin eyesight testing immediately. Those in the back should return here for eyesight testing after noon chow.”

With the help of the Indian scout non-coms, by the end of the day, we had reduced the number of candidates to seventy-seven.