Cara’s Blog

The excerpts from the Diary of Private Joseph Plumb Martin were both fascinating and beneficial to read. What stuck me first about Joseph Martin’s story was the lack of care that was given to the soldiers. One of the first passages I read stated that “In the cold month of November, [they were] without provisions, without clothing, [and without] a scrap of either shoes or stockings.” I can not imagine being expected to fight for someone who didn’t even provide me with basic necessities. Even more inexcusable, in my opinion, was that the army promised the men that they would have “one pound of good and wholesome fresh or salt beef… a pound of good flour, soft or hard bread, a gill of rum, brandy, or whiskey per day, some little soap, candies” and more. Martin said that they were lucky to get Vinegar on Thanksgiving. This reminded me of a movie I watched in European history about World War 1 called “All Quiet on the Western Front.” ( information on the movie)When the men in this movie joined the army they were promised at least two meals a day and not a week into their combat the men were forced to eat wood shavings for nutrition.
Another passage that struck me was how divided the men were amongst each other. Private Martin’s regiment were made of up men from New England and Pennsylvania. He described his experiences with them saying “I’d rather be fighting with a tribe of Indians than with those Southerners… [they] can’t hardly speak English… They call me that ‘damn Yankee.’ That’s about the nicest thing they [said].” I could tell how much he disliked his fellow soldiers by the way his style of writing changed. All the other passages seemed more formally written, even when he was writing about the fears he faced on a daily basis. If I didn’t know better I would have thought that it were a different man who wrote the passage about the colonists.