The Horrors of Libby Prison

From the book  One Came Back/Un Revenant: A Franco-American Civil War Novel  by Margaret Langford (Translator), Remi Tremblay.

  Available February 2002 from Images from the Past Press,   ISBN: 1884592228
P.O. Box 137 Bennington, VT 05201

 

"One Came Back" is a very curious work. It is really a story-within-a-story.  Remi imbeds his true life adventures in the 14th US Regular Infantry in a rousing melodramatic novel complete with heroes, rogues and damsels in distress.  We know from Remi's autobiography that he is Eugene. There are a few adventures which haven't been authenticated, but the rest has.  Throughout his life Remi was fond of using pseudonyms. His reason for using an alias during his stay at Libby and afterwards seems to have to do with his habit of wandering off from his regiment.  Remi joined the 14th US regulars at Rouse's Point New York when he was 16.  Although he lied about his age, two "guardians" swore that he was of age and fit to serve.  At 5'3'', he just made the height requirement (Fall, 1863).

Remi never lost his love of the 14th which, in spite of his frequent absences, he seemed to have considered "his" regiment.  When WWI broke out, Remi attempted to join the Canadian forces (he'd gone on to earn an officer's commission after the Civil War).  Rejected because of ill-health and age, he attempted to join the US army - on the grounds that he'd never completed his service.  In short, Remi's life reads very much like a novel.   He did it all - journalist, dramatist, poet. He lived, worked -and fought - in both Canada and the US.

The following chapters describe his incredible story of survival at the Confederacy's Libby Prison:

 

Chapter L:  The Horrors of Libby Prison

Eugène waited feverishly for the guard to return; he came twice a day with his aides to distribute the rations.  He was a big fellow, hale and hearty, the overseer type; Leduc had already seen him rush down the stairs and threaten the crowd of black and white prisoners who fought over their meager pittance with his revolver and knife. He came at the usual time and, as he was climbing the stairs leading to the top floor, Eugène tried to follow him.  The guard yelled at him to go back down.  And when Eugène tried to explain that he would consider it a great favor if he could visit a friend upstairs.   The guard turned and struck him hard in the face.  Eugène was thrown back down the two or three steps he'd just climbed.  As the Canadian got up again he saw the guard coming towards him pointing the barrel of his cocked pistol right at him.

“Well, go ahead and shoot, you coward! And be damned!” yelled Eugène as he wiped away the blood flowing from his nose.

“Try to go up those stairs and you’ll see if I don’t shoot.”

“Who says I was trying to go upstairs without your permission?  I asked you politely if I could go up to see a friend and you hit me.”

Seeing Eugène wasn't trying to go upstairs any longer, the guard continued on up to the top floor. Most likely he regretted his brutality because when he came down again he spotted Eugene who was still standing not too far from the staircase and said:

“You can go up - but if you do, you stay there.  I hit you because I thought you wanted to attack me when my back was turned.  If I let prisoners follow me on the stairs my life wouldn't be worth a plugged nickel.  I'm letting you go up because I think I had the wrong idea about you.”

Thus Eugène was able to go to the top floor and so escape impending danger.  When the Kentuckians moved up to the last floor two months later, Leduc had gotten so thin they no longer recognized him.

The three or four hundred prisoners held in each room were divided into squads of sixteen men.

Each squad leader divided the four loaves of corn bread into sixteen equal parts.   Each loaf weighed about one pound. When the loaves had been divided in this way, he asked the assembled men if they were satisfied with the allotments.  As long as there wasn't unanimous agreement that all the portions were equal, he had to take a crumb from one portion to add it to another until everyone was satisfied. Then one of the men took the booklet with the names of all the men in the squad and turned his back to the sixteen rations laid out on the floor. Another man put his hand at random on one of the rations and asked:

“Whose is this?”

“John Smith's,” said the man with the booklet as he made a mark by John Smith's name.”

“Whose is this?” repeated the first man as he pointed out another ration.”

“Washington C. Joslin's,” said the man with the book, who, keeping his back turned to the rations checked off the names as each man got his share.

And so it went right on down the list.  To even further insure impartiality, the two distributors were chosen on the spot so it was practically impossible for them to have an understanding beforehand.

In Libby Prison the smallest crumb of corn bread was considered worth its weight in gold.  The prisoners looked like veritable walking skeletons.  Some, though they could no longer stand up, had strength enough to crawl on hands and knees to squabble over a crumb of bread no bigger than a plum pit - a crumb that a prisoner who wasn't so hungry would have let fall into the spit and tobacco juice on the floor.  These squabbles usually degenerated into fights.  Then you’d see three or four of these living specters, with every bone showing through the skin in their gaunt faces, rolling on the ground.  They hit one another without having the strength to do any damage, tried in vain to strangle one another and finally fell back on the ground exhausted.

They all had scurvy, and, when someone grabbed hold of them, the tip of his finger sank into the little bit of flesh remaining and left a hole that disappeared after a few minutes.

For a time they were given bones which passed for meat.  All the meat which hadn't been removed from the carcasses before sending them to prison was divided into microscopic portions for the prisoners.  As for the bones, they were distributed by lot.   You were lucky if you got a bone.  The happy mortal who fortune favored by making him owner of such a treasure began by breaking it open with a stone.  This exposed the marrow.  Then he pulverized it so he could eat the crumbly parts.

When the inner parts of the bone had been gnawed so nothing was left but the hard surface, he boiled the rest of it to make a delicious soup.  It was as meaty as if he’d boiled a stone.  The poor devils who only had the bones poking through their own skins gave a half-ration of bread for a pint of that so-called soup.  Each time the bone was cooked, they crumbled some more of it.  When it had provided ten soups or so, the little bit left had become tender enough for the prisoner to crush with his teeth.  A bone went for a good price.  In fact, there was a lot of bartering in Libby Prison.  The prisoners smoked and chewed.  Instead of giving up their pipes, some smokers had taken up the chewing habit in prison.  Nevertheless each pound of tobacco consumed meant forgoing one day's ration.

Some prisoners had smuggled greenbacks into the prison.  How had they managed to fool those whose mission it was to search newcomers when they entered prison and to confiscate all valuables found in their possession?  There's a mystery that has never been explained satisfactorily.

At the beginning of the winter of 1864-65, flour went for eight hundred dollars a barrel in Confederate currency and promised to go even higher.  The inmates in Libby prison who happened to have some capital thought about making it last a little longer by speculating on their comrades' misery.  Human nature is the same everywhere.  By bribing the guard, they had wheat bread brought in and displayed their wares before the others' starving eyes.  Bargaining for corn bread rations they always managed to make a profit.

They also sold tobacco and misery had so weakened the prisoners’ reason as it weakened their bodies that they didn't hesitate to exchange half a day's ration for a plug of tobacco.  These goods were hoisted up at night by means of a rope let down from a window looking out over the James river.  They were displayed in broad daylight without the guard saying anything about it.  Probably he took his cut from this black market trading.

As the others weakened, the speculators, who kept themselves fat and sleek, became more arrogant. The difference in physical strength between them and their unhappy victims became greater and greater.  They abused this advantage and used every chance they got to bully men too feeble to defend themselves.  They were cordially detested.   It was rumored that men of this sort were hanged by the Salisbury prisoners in revenge for the bad treatment they had endured.

There were two stoves in each room.  Three armloads of soft wood were burned in each one every twenty-four hours.  The winter was very cold and air entered through the paneless windows. When there was wood, the stoves burned red, but the wood supply was quickly used up.  When there was a fire, the strongest gathered around the fire and drove the others away with their fists.

As long as the authorities kept on giving bones to the prisoners, those who couldn't get near the stove consoled themselves by pledging half of their next ration for a pint of that famous soup that at least had the virtue of warming them.  When they no longer got any more of this soup made from carrion they were content to pay the same price for hot water that had been salted and peppered.  It should be noted that all these transactions were done on credit.  A prisoner would never agree to barter his ration until he had it in hand.

The creditor was always there to get his share when the provisions were distributed.   And since he was usually a well-fed man while the debtor couldn't stand up or found it difficult to stand up, he never had the slightest difficulty in getting paid.

A few days before Christmas, they began to serve the prisoners a kind of small cod which they ate raw and found to be excellent.  Hunger is the best seasoning for any dish.  After two or three days, the cod disappeared and never reappeared.  From that time on the prisoners had to be satisfied with the infinitesimally small ration of corn bread.  Despite their misery or perhaps because of it, the prisoners sang a lot.   Was it because of the soldiers' naturally carefree nature or because their mental faculties were weakened?  No one will ever know.  But one thing is sure:   these fits of gaiety didn't last long.  Those that sang the most weren't necessarily those that cried the least.


Chapter LI:  You Can't Get Enough of a Good Thing

On New Year's Day each of the prisoners received a blanket; the United States Sanitary Commission had brought them under a flag of truce.  The folks back home hadn't forgotten them.  People knew they were suffering and made very effort to help.

Up until that time the prisoners had bedded down on the floor without any blankets at all.  They huddled together to keep warm and they slept "spoon style" all lying on the same side.  They stayed in that position for an hour, then, since they heard the sentinel calling out the hour as was the custom in the Confederate army, the row leader called out:  "Left spoon!" or "Right spoon!" as the case might be and everyone turned to that side.  The arrival of the blankets put an end to that nightly exercise temporarily.  They went back to it later when most of the blankets had been converted into eatables as we will see later.  Meanwhile, the prisoners grouped themselves in threes.  They put two blankets under them to make a mattress and covered themselves with the third.

This change brought great relief to those poor wretches whose bodies wasted by privations had become so emaciated that sleeping on the floor had rubbed them raw and they all had sores on their backs.  They were literally eaten up by body parasites.   Each man was a millionaire as far as that went.  He had millions of disgusting insects on him.  There wasn't any remedy for that.

Just ask men dying of hunger and freezing with cold to strip themselves naked so they can wash the rags covering their emaciated bodies.  All of them or just about all of them had reoccurring fevers. The prison doctor gave them quinine and made them drink castor oil right out of a pint bottle. Privation had so corrupted their taste that that oily substance seemed delicious to them and they drank long draughts of it.

The story goes that the insects we've been talking about were so huge that the prisoners used to jump on their backs, grab hold of one of their ears and gallop around the room at sixty miles an hour.  Of course that's an exaggeration.  It's like the story told by the soldier who said he woke up one night in camp.  He thought he saw a stranger in his cabin.  As he rubbed his eyes, he realized it was a huge flea that had eaten all his hardtack and was picking his teeth with a bayonet.

Of course we don't believe that story but it ‘s true that the guests in Libby Prison were so covered with parasites that, a few days after the blanket delivery we told you about, while the prisoners were walking around with the blankets covering their shoulders you couldn't stick a pin through those improvised shawls without being guilty of insecticide.

The prisoners had hardly any amusements.  They were forbidden to go near the windows on pain of death.  If the sentry saw a head leaning on the window bars he’d shoot first and shout afterwards:

“Get away from there, damned Yankee.”

A poor devil who was far from suspecting what he was risking had the audacity to want to take a look at the street - he got his skull shattered by a bullet.

As winter went by, deaths increased.  When it was obvious a man was dying, he was sent to the hospital; for the most part, he died there, even though conditions were much better than in Libby prison.  Ordinarily, when a man was sent to the hospital, he was too weak to ever leave it again.  It's true that if every man whose weakened condition demanded immediate attention had been sent to the hospital the prison would have been emptied on the spot and the hospital would have been much to small to hold them all.   A great number of men died in each of the three rooms and Eugène himself had lost all hope of leaving that earthly Hell alive.

Leduc had formed a cooperation with a Philadelphian and a German.  Their capital consisted of the three partners' three blankets.  However he outlived the two others who died of starvation some two weeks after they helped spend the company's capital.   One night of extravagances ruined them - for it’s true that the very best companies crumble when the owners take to spending the profits.

Eugène was fast asleep all the while slapping at insects and dreaming that he was at a magnificent banquet.  That was the dream these poor wretches usually dreamed; during the day they couldn't stop talking about tasty sauces, wonderful dishes and how to prepare them.

This kind of talk and the dreams that followed never failed to whet appetites which were already fierce enough.

Suddenly Leduc felt someone shaking him by the arm, and, opening his eyes, he noticed the Philadephian who kept tugging at him.

“Why don't you leave me alone?” he said “I was enjoying a wonderful meal.”

“Don't waste your time dreaming now!  We’re really going to eat.   The guard is buying the blankets. We're going to sacrifice one of the three and get a loaf of wheat bread in exchange.  A one pound loaf to split among the three of us.   It's a godsend!  Are we going to eat your fill or not?”

”Let's sell a blanket . . . You don't object, do you Dutchy.”

“Ja, I have no injection.”

“Then let’s be quick about it.  I like to have things move along when I'm doing business.”

The Philadelphian went to the end of the room, handed over the blanket which was lowered by rope, and soon came back with a pound loaf.  With meticulous care they divided the bread into three equal parts and how each one relished his share!  It was so good that they couldn't resist the temptation of eating another and a second blanket was sacrificed on the spot.  Then the Philadelphian, taking advantage of the Prussian's absence, stole and sold his blanket.

Despite his honesty, Eugène didn’t have the courage to refuse his share of the profit from this illegal sale.  May those who behaved better in similar circumstances cast the first stone!

Then they sold their last blanket; the Prussian tried in vain to claim it was his.   It belonged to Eugène and bore his mark.  The next day the company didn’t have a single blanket left, but the members had eaten a pound and a third of wheat bread - a feast without precedent in the annals of Libby Prison.


Chapter LII:  Hunger is a bad advisor

Toward the beginning of February 1865, Eugène, sole survivor of the corporation founded dealing in Uncle Sam's blankets, had become so weak that his row neighbors were obliged to bring him his ration.  When he’d eaten his modest meal (modest isn't an exaggeration), he regained enough strength to drag himself painfully as far as the faucet that supplied water to the prison.  After he had had a drink of water, he came back to his place exhausted.  He lay on the floor until another meal allowed him to undertake his twice daily journey once again.  He sensed that another two weeks on this regimen would certainly be the death of him; he made a decision.  He resolved to eat his fill one more time before dying.

The speculators had become unbearably arrogant.  They found a way to get Apple Jack, apple whiskey, in spite of prison regulations.  The regulations!  What regulations?  No laws or regulations can withstand the all-mighty power of money, that god worshipped in every country in the world and especially in the United States!

The speculators in question, (we use the word "speculator" because that was the term used in prison to describe these vampires) were always three sheets to the wind.   They policed the room, and what police, good God!  More than once Eugène had seen two or three of them get together and beat a poor half-starved devil black and blue.   Their display of bread naturally drove poor starving wretches crazy and the least honest or perhaps the most desperate of them tried to help themselves surreptitiously during the night.

Woe to the guilty man caught in the act or whose guilt was discovered.  Two or three sturdy rascals seized him while another struck him repeatedly with a board two inches thick. Then they left the battered and bloody body lying there.  One of Eugène's neighbors who’d been ordered to go wash his face and who’d refused because he didn't have the strength to move had been hit with a cane on his forehead.  As a result he’d lost a lot of blood.  He had to be taken to the hospital.  He probably never left there alive.

In Eugène's weakened state, risking the anger of those brutes with human faces was like risking death. However, he didn’t think twice about it; he wanted to eat - he couldn’t think about anything else and didn't want anything else.  The consequences weren't important.

During his stay in the room on the top floor he’d swapped a lot of his rations and half-rations for tobacco, for bones, for the famous watery soup, or for portions of wheat bread.  Like all the others, he’d always made his deal on credit and, not having been able to do otherwise, he’d always paid regularly; therefore his credit was good with the Dunn and Bradstreets of that institution.

He resolved to take advantage of that circumstance to gorge himself - and there he was buying portions of wheat bread from five or six different speculators and promising his next ration to each one in turn.  He did so well that when the time had come to distribute the food he was no longer hungry.  If he’d been able to multiply his ration so as to satisfy all his creditors he would have been the happiest of men.

Now he saw that the inevitable hour of retribution had come; he expected to face an hour of reckoning that would make other hours of reckoning seem like a picnic.  Lying down and pretending to be sick wouldn't get him anywhere; he decided to face up to the danger and be present when the rations were distributed.

“Whose is this?” the distributor asked.

“Washington C. Joslin's.”

“His ration's mine!” cried out a chorus of five or six voices. “Gentlemen,” said Eugène, “I admit my guilt.  I wanted to eat before I died and I’ve eaten.  I know you're going to beat me and that I won't long survive the beating you're about to give me with your board.  Get on with it and try to put an end to this long death agony I've been enduring for the last six months or so.

“Well, so be it.  We're going to take what's coming to us out of your miserable hide,” said one of the speculators as he grabbed him by the throat.   One of the creditors intervened.

“No violence,” he said.  “Let's overlook this first offense.   I'll be responsible for reimbursing the others.  If he lives, he’ll pay me in time.” Eugène was moved to tears.  He seized his protector's hand.

“Be assured that my gratitude . . .”

“The devil take you and your gratitude,” interrupted the other.”   You can prove your gratitude by repaying me.”

Eugène never was to have the opportunity to repay him.  The very same day 1,000 of the weakest prisoners were released on parole from Libby and Pemberton prison.

The reason for this choice is easy to show.  The Southerners were interested in exchanging men who were likely to die in their hands (and who, for the most part, wouldn't be able to bear arms for a long time) for Confederate prisoners getting fat in northern prisons.  They kept the strongest, that is to say those who hadn't been reduced to skeletons by their sufferings.  That group was made up of speculators (who were to expiate their sins by staying in prison longer than the others) and the new arrivals.

Eugène's feast almost cost him dearly.   The ample repast he’d just eaten had restored his strength; he wasn't considered weak enough.  He saw the others lining up to leave; he was condemned to stay.  That sight threw him into despair; he felt the blood draining from his face which had taken on a healthy color after his meal.  He was shaking with fever and began to have spasms.  He took advantage of this to slip into the ranks of those who were supposed to leave; he got there just in time to give his name to the doctor who didn't seem to remember he had examined and rejected him.  The prisoners were brought down to the ground floor where they were given a double ration and spent the night.

The next day, the doors of the prison opened and the prisoners staggered out like drunken men. Their lungs were no longer used to the open air and their spindly legs could barely hold up their emaciated bodies.  Dirty, disgusting, covered with body parasites, gaunt to the point that just by looking at them you could have studied anatomy without using a scalpel.  They looked like disgusting rags covering walking bundles of bones.  Some had to walk barefoot on the frozen cobblestones.  Others, with their worn-out shoes, had managed to tie the soles to the uppers with rags.  When these flapping soles caught on some irregularity in the pavement, the poor devil fell full length dragging a half a dozen or so of his miserable companions with him.

Nevertheless, despite many falls, despite the fatigue brought on by the journey, all those angular faces were smiling.  They boarded the William Allison.   But it was impossible to leave that day because of the ice blocking the shores of the James river.  They had to return to Libby prison where all the prisoners who were to be released on parole were locked up on the ground floor.  The usual ration was doubled.  And the authorities even had the good grace to bring them a kettle of sorghum molasses.  However, the prisoners didn't have any plates or bowls.  They had to receive their portion of molasses in their upturned caps.  Eight days later they left again - this time, never to come back.


Chapter LIII:  Out on Parole

The prisoners paroled from southern prisons weren't to take up arms again until they had been duly exchanged for an equal number of Confederate prisoners.  The 1,000 men released from Libby and Pemberton prison were to travel under a flag of truce down the James river on board the William Allison.  Two or three miles before they reached Wilcox Landing they were to board the steamboat City of New York and proceed to Annapolis, Maryland where Camp Parole was located.

Eight days earlier ice had prevented the steamboat from leaving port. The captains in that part of the country aren't at all accustomed to obstacles of this sort.   Their ships aren't built to contend with such rare inconveniences.  The winter of 1864-1865 had been extremely harsh; quite understandably the trip was postponed for eight days because of ice.

The William Allison traveled down the James River; the banks were bristling with high caliber cannon.   Moreover, it was a known fact that the river bottom was well lined with torpedoes; only the pilots that the Richmond authorities had entrusted with the secrets of their locations could navigate around them.  The famous General Mosby was on board and the prisoners could examine him at their leisure.

Along the banks of the river the Federals had positioned their forces as follows: the Army of the Potomac was on the right bank of the James; the Army of the James was on the left on the opposite bank - Union gunboats held the area in between.  Naturally the William Allison couldn't go beyond that line; the prisoners disembarked and went on foot to Wilcox Landing.

As they came aboard the City of New York, each soldier received a large hunk of wheat bread, a big slice of ham, and a tin cup with a full pint of steaming coffee.   Then they went to the saloon where they could munch away at their leisure.   Towards evening they passed City Point where Grant had set up his general headquarters.

The next morning the prisoners went down to get their ration of bread, ham and coffee.   To prevent pushing and shoving a cordon of guards with bayonets had been placed right in the middle of the steerage quarters.  The prisoners went down one of the stairways, filed to the starboard side, entered a room in the front of the boat, got their ration, went out by another door and went up the other stairway.

Army surgeons had been ordered to see that these poor devils didn't get any more food than their ruined stomachs could digest.  But the memory of past hardships made the prisoners worry about what the future might bring.  They felt they were dreaming one of those fantastic dreams that had so often comforted them during their captivity; they were afraid they’d wake up to find themselves suffering hunger pangs again.

Haunted by that childish fear, all they thought about was getting food so they'd have it when they needed it.  When they’d gulped down their first meal or put away what they hadn't been able to eat, most returned to the charge.  They slipped by, or rather we should say, forced the sentries; we can say this in praise of the sentries: not one of them would have had the courage to use his weapons to push back that mob of ragged skeletons.

They’d been feeding the prisoners breakfast for three hours.  They’d handed out 1,500 rations instead of a thousand and the crowd, still at the door, was pushing, shoving and clamoring for more food.  Naturally the men yelling the loudest were the men who’d come back for more.  They’d already gotten some strength from their hearty breakfasts.  Probably there were some poor wretches who hadn't gotten anything yet.  The guard was sent back with two cases.  Each contained 150 pounds of hardtack which he tossed out like fodder to the prisoners.

Never had a charge against confederate positions been mounted with more gusto than the charge on those two boxes.  The prisoners mounted the attack with a vigor defying all description.  The thin boards covering the hard tack were shattered; then there was a free-for-all.  Leduc was right in the middle of the mélée stuffing a large oilcloth bag full of hardtack while the others exchanged blows.

There was only one man wounded - a poor devil who fell under the others' feet and got his arm broken - but several died in the aftermath of that brawl.  They didn't die from mortal blows but rather from eating too many of the biscuits they’d wanted so badly.  A hardtack biscuit measures about five inches long by four inches wide and hardly a hair's width thick.  It's as hard as a brick.  If you put it in hot water or in coffee it swells up and thickens to extraordinary proportions.  Ten of these biscuits weigh a pound.  A poor Zouave who’d eaten forty-two of them in a six hour period choked to death while eating the forty-third.  By the time the ship put into port at Fort Monroe, three men were dead of overeating.  Ten or so others were in not much better shape.  Everyone was ill.  It was said that they were seasick.  But they were really sick from the hardtack because the sea was quite calm while they were sailing on Chesapeake Bay.

The City of New York was a magnificent boat.  The velvet covered saloon furnishings must have kept living souvenirs of the prisoners' trip.  Eugène hadn't seen a mirror for six months.  When he’d last seen himself, he'd thought he was handsome enough.  As he passed by one of the mirrors in the saloon, he saw what he looked like now.  At first he thought he was looking at a stranger.  When he moved, he realized that that awful face was really his own; he burst into tears.

He’d become frightfully thin; his eyes were sunk in their sockets.  His features had lost their natural roundness and had become quite angular.  He’d been a handsome blond-haired boy with rosy cheeks.  Now he was as pale as a corpse.   His face was covered with a thick layer of filth which looked like it had been there since America was discovered.  His hair, now down to his shoulders, was swarming with parasites.  A clump of yellowish hairs growing on the side of his chin housed a very thick and active population of parasites also.  His old uniform, torn, dirty and covered with vermin hung in rags on him.  He turned away in disgust.   He walked away convinced that his stay in prison hadn't helped his looks.

When they arrived in Camp Parole, the prisoners (we keep calling them prisoners because they hadn't been exchanged yet) were first taken to a sort of bathhouse where they had to wash up before entering the main camp.  After taking off all his clothes in the anti-room, each man stretched out in a bathtub full of hot water.  Next they let him soak for awhile.  Then he was soaped and scrubbed vigorously.  When he’d been cleaned up thoroughly, he went into another room where he got new linen and a new uniform.  They let him go after telling him to get a shave and haircut.

These bathhouses were some distance away from the camp itself.  The new arrivals were taken by wagon to the barracks.  Then, they were placed in the care of doctors who put them on strict diets and gave them the medicine they needed.  Almost all of them came back with scurvy and fever. Each soldier released from southern prisons could claim two months’ pay plus a pension of $7 per month for each month spent in captivity and was granted thirty days' leave as soon as he was fit to travel.   Eugène had given his real name and counted on getting his leave and leaving for Canada before anyone could check his record.  Two weeks after he arrived, he was strong enough to move about without getting tired too easily.  He was gaining weight, but he was still pale.  Three weeks later, he got his leave, drew six month's pension, two months' pay and left for the East fully intending to go back to Canada.

He took the troop train to Annapolis in the company of another soldier from Camp Parole who was going on leave.  This man was a thirty-five year old Scotsman, a former sailor who had traveled all over the world.  They soon got to know one another.   The Scotsman invited Eugène to join the navy with him.  In New York, he knew a former sailor who would be glad, so he said, to both help them get some civilian clothes and join the Navy.  They arrived in New York at night.  They went to stay with the Scotsman’s friend.  The friend owned a boarding house for sailors on Hamilton street.  By the next morning both soldiers were dressed in civilian clothes.


Read an original poem by Margaret Langford based on Remi Tremblay's experience...


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The Horrors of Libby Prison: Excerpts from the book One Came Back/Un Revenant: A Franco-American Civil War Novel by Margaret Langford (Translator), Remi Tremblay
Copyright © 2008  Images from the Past
Last modified: February 05, 2017