Food, Glorious Food

 

 

Amateurs study strategy and tactics; professionals study logistics.  At least, that’s what I’ve been told.  And in that vein, the preceding three posts are reports from acting commissaries of subsistence in McDowell’s army.  Check out a juicy tidbit at the end of Hawkins’s report, which gives some insight into why the three days rations with which the troops left camp didn’t last that long.  In most histories of the campaign, the difference is attributed to a soldier’s natural tendency to eat everything in his haversack as quickly as possible.  Maybe that’s not the only reason.

Sketch by Edwin Forbes, Commissary Department, with Three Days Rations and Kitchen, on the March