From The Evening Times
Washington, D.C.
5 August, 1902

DEPARTMENTAL WORKERS
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Interesting Gossip Gleaned Among Employes
of Government Bureaus.
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HEAVY CAMPAIGNING IN THE CIVIL WAR
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Captain Gilliland Tells Some Interesting Happenings of
the Last Winter of the Conflict -- A Civil
Service Recruit From Porto Rico.
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   Captain Gilliland, of the Interior Department watch force, who was in command of a company from Pennsylvania during the civil war, tells many interesting things of the great struggle. He was in the service through the whole of the war and was a witness to the grim and tragic scenes of the camp and battlefield as well as to the trying and picturesque features of the service. There were plenty of things to divert the attention of the soldier from the bloody work.
   The captain says the last winter of the war was a mighty solemn time. His regiment was in east Tennessee, the weather was bad, the base of supplies was 20 miles away in Kentucky, and the men got terribly hungry and ragged. The rebels were hungry and ragged to begin with and they frequented the road the wagon trains took in the hope of bettering their condition, and they frequently got valuable stores. The captain is satisfied some rebels lived well that winter, because his men missed meals and got out of shoes right in the dead of winter.
   One day there was an issue of beef hides for shoemaking. It was expected that the men would make moccasins of the squares of hides issued and there were busy times for a day or so. Some of the men were woodsmen, but some were thoroughly ignorant of anything in the way of shoemaking or sewing. There was in the captain’s company a big Frenchman, who, from his height, headed the company formation. He was entirely ignorant of almost everything and his moccasins were sights to remember. He merely doubled the hide over his expansive feet and stitched it, leaving about four inches of leather running out in front. He was a holy show on dress parade.
   The captain says that the fighting near Petersburg was something to remember. He was out in the woods with his company one night in the rain and the darkness was so great that keeping together seemed impossible. But he evolved an idea which was the means in getting his company out of the woods and making it the only whole one at roll call. He had on a rubber storm coot[sic], which the orderly sergeant caught. The men caught on behind and the long blue string of them marched about through the woods that way until the night was gone.
   It was near Petersburg that General Beaver rejoined his command, after having been wounded in a fight shortly before. He rode into the battle in an ambulance, and a little later rode to the hospital in that same ambulance. He lost a leg that time.

-- transcription by Kate Maynard, 2010