Cindy Flood
Super Moderator
Thank you, mediumcool. (Thank you, BigLouis, too.)I wonder what the promotion prospects for drummer boys would have been like—as with flag carriers, they would have been targeted early on in any battle. And as Stephen Wright once said, “How can any war be civil?”
Lovely light in these …
According to an article that I read in the Washington Post, the youngest drummer boy tried to enlist when he was 9. The official minimum age was 18, but younger boys would say that they were 18. Johnny Clem ran away from his home in Ohio and wanted to join the Union Army. He was refused (even though there were many boys of 11 and 12). He refused to go home so a unit from Michigan made him their mascot and drummer boy. They had a uniform made to fit him. By age 11 he was officially in as a soldier. He went on to have a long military career, retiring as a brigadier general in 1915.
Drummer boys were important in the Civil War. There was a lot of noise on the battlefield and commands could not be heard. They tapped out the codes for the different commands. They also carried wounded from the field on stretchers.