From the combat drills to the payment we talk about the unsung heroes of the average soldier during the American revolutionary war.
What you gonna do brother, when Jeff Townsend media runs wild on you. America Stories. All right, all right, all right, welcome to yet another fantastic, superb stupendous episode of America Stories. I'm Jeff Townsend joining me or Luke and Jock. Apparently he's so every week you can't really see it, but he gets cute and he changes his name to something different here on the recording, and so you don't get to enjoy that. But I think it was Jack o'lanyard last week. I think it was Jack off the week before. I'm not sure, but anyway, nevertheless, guys, we are like, what is this the ninth episode? Yeah? I think I dropped something on the Delphi case. So but yeah, it's the ninth episode of America's Stories. It's kind of crazy, how far We've come? Yeah it is. It's like that song Let's see how far we come? Good song? What do you think, Jock? Is a famous song? Famous song? So yeah, wow, you can check out the podcast. Of course, we'll go ahead and get an early plug in Americastories dot us. And like I said, we're eight episodes in, going on the ninth now, so check out the previous episodes. We're kind of going in order through American history here. We're doing this any fun, lighthearted manner, and it's I think it's interesting stuff too. I think if you don't even need history class, if you just listen to this podcast, so American history is not needed, we'll dis cover you. Yeah, we've got you. I guess we didn't start out at the very very very very beginning, but nevertheless, we did start off with right before the Revolutionary War, and we're working our way through it. Now, what did we do last episode? Guys? Was it the center the end of the siege of Boston. That's all we did. That's all we did. So every couple episodes we kind of break off and we do a little bit more detail on things. And that's kind of what you guys had in mind for today's recording. Yes, we want to speak about well, you know, we always hear about the grand you know, figures of the time. You know, they they just Washington's and the atoms and and they like, But not enough time has ever spent on the regular soldiers at the time. We focus on the big dogs, is what you're saying. We don't don't We got to focus on the little people, the little dogs. Little dogs are important. These were people who were on the front lines. There was people we were dying for this cause, right, and they they definitely deserve their due. But it's interesting to know, like what was the day to day life of one of these souls when they weren't fighting. So, the average evolutionary soldier in the Colonial army at the start of the war was enlistment of about six months, so, which was not a lot of time to train and then you know, deploy, And so we talked about that in the last episode. We're talking about towards the end of winter, Washington was worried about a lot of these enlistments coming up because these soldiers are on a short term. Shortly after that, they began raising the terms of how long you are listed and ended up being up to three years. Did they not think it was going to be I just tried to think of how they came up with the number to begin with. I get the extended later, but they just think this is going to be like a short term thing. So that's actually a good question. And I believe that a lot of people at the time, we're just knowing that this was going to be resolved diplomatically still, and so they just were like, well, we see a hold at this level of troops for a while, and then later it will we'll just you know, well, after we discuss things, we won't need them anymore. That six months is still a long time, don't get me wrong. I mean that's still a really long time when you're doing that every day. Yeah, And like I said, by the end of it, they had expanded it up to three years. The way they got people agree to enlist for that length of time is they promised everyone one hundred acres of land when they when they finish their enlistments. That was a big thing back then, right, everybody wanted property. Yeah, I mean it's still technically a big thing now. Yeah. Oh yeah, but I'm not sure i'd go to fight at war for three years therefore some property. That's true. Yeah. Still, though, it's like they can't pay him money. So what you're saying is they may not be able. Like what they couldn't pay in funds, they might make up foreign assets, and that assets being acres of land exactly. Yeah, they could pay them a moderate amount of cash, but they knew that the real way to bring them in would be the land at the end. The actually the soldiers pay was around six dollars and thirty five cents a month, which equals to be about thirteen hundred and today's dollars. Not a substantial amount today's money either, really no, not really no, especially because they had to buy their own equipment and uniform. Oh wow, yeah, all their musket balls and everything. They had to pay for themselves out of pocket, so obviously there wasn't a lot of cash to go around. They did get food when they're in camp. They were given about a pound and a half of beef per day that was supplemented with a pound of bread or one and a half pounds of flour. You had a choice there. But the beef that also counted the weight of the bone, fat, and cartilage, so it wasn't all just meat. It was, you know, kind of the scrap parts of the beef that they gave them. Almost were they just going to eat the flour like I'm trying to figure out. It was like either or so they would usually make a meal with it. They would sometimes make a porridge like a flour porridge, or they would make a pancake what they would like to do at the time was mixed a little bit of water, flour, salt, and some of the beef fat into a pancake and then they've cooked that up on a board which I think it was called bannock board. Then that would be cooked up next to the fire. If they didn't have a bannic board, they would usually cook at a spade or even sometimes just straight off a stone in the in the ash spade. And to like the extent of them also buying their own equipment and like bullets and things, some of them would probably also bring along other types of you know, herbs or spices or something like that. That's something dry that they could put with the food. So, you know, we see a lot of stories about military people who would make stews with the meat and then maybe add flour to thicken it, things like that, and then whatever flavoring they could add to it along with the mail. What if they were like selling this stuff to each other, you know, like, oh, I'm sure there was some trading because there were some other conditions for other people outside of the military to get rations, and so you can imagine that they would have been trading. If someone wanted more beef for more bread, depending on what types do they were trying to make, or maybe summer sausage. I gotta mentioned summer sausage in every episode. So of this so good. Seems like you can carry your bag, you know, and as you're going just take a bite out of it and put it back in there some kind of jerky, yeah, exactly. They were also give a daily ration of about two ounces two three ounces of hard spirits that was to go into your canteen of water that you would get usually from a creek. And at the time they didn't really know what they were exactly why, because bacteria wasn't really ann saying at the time, but they knew that it made it more palatable and usually less sickness was spread. You think they called it a creek or a creek, I would say creek for sure, chalk, what would you have your money on? Well, I still call it a creek, So I hope they called it a creek. So yeah, they didn't really, I guess I didn't think about that. Obviously, it's not good just to drink straight out of the creek, but you gotta do what you gotta do, right, Yeah, they did also boil water in the camp, but if you were out in the field training, you would drink it out of a canteen, and so you would you would definitely want that alcohol in there at at least somewhat purify it. I gotcha. So it's not to get a little bit of a kick, if you know what I mean, it's to sterilize the crik water or lakewater or whatever the heck they were doing ease. Okay, does that actually work? Well? It did somewhat. It's actually why if people drink so much beer back in the day, because beer was easier to drink once it had a little bit of fermentation. They would make what's called small beers and it would have like one ounce or two or one percent or two percent alcohol, and that would be enough to kill off the bacteria and make it so you didn't get dehydrated and hung over. So you mean to bring small beers back. I agree. Small beer is actually something that they would make in each household. Like you didn't have necessarily be a brewer, have like a brewery to make small beer. You just kind of did it in like a bowl in your house or a jog or something like that. Wow. Yeah. It was definitely a part that was very common in day to day life, so they really knew how to do it. Did they get this from this? Like where did they get this from? Just like a tradition that was practiced around the world or yeah, pretty much it was practiced everywhere at the time. Because it was no it was a known thing. They didn't know. Like I said, they didn't have the science of the bacteria, but they knew that this would you know, you get the ships if you just drink it shraight out of the creek, is what you're saying. Yeah, yeah, sore. On those lines, they also, well they didn't necessarily know about the bacteria. They didn't know that they needed to preserve it, right, They had to take action to make sure either food or drink would go bad. So that's why they would like pickle or brine like meats, and like casks and jars and things like that. It would put like a lost and salt water to preserve the meat longer, and then they probably just like, well, let's preserve the water longer. So they didn't have whatever the you know, whatever it is that's causing it to go bad. The day to day of the soldiers were almost entirely taken up with drills regarding musket and banonet practice, as well as building forts and digging latrines. Latrines at the time were actually called vaults. I actually don't know why, but it changed over the years, but vaults is what they were called. And the vault was basically a hole that they dug out with a slit over the top that they put on there with wood and that would act as their latrine vault. Interesting, so you said banet right when they first started, they didn't. This was not like a common American practice, right, This was something that was adapted. Yes, when they originally they did not have. And shortly after the Battle of Boston, the band has became a band at practice, and have you know, there was more widespread. They definitely knew that they needed them after Bunker Hill, and they just flat out produced them to get them in time. A day of drilling would last eight hours solid, regardless of weather. You didn't have time to eat during that time. You would just basically be drilling the entire time. At night is when you would break again for food. Every group of men was an eight men squad that they call a mess. You all cooked together. Everyone worked together to make their meals, and that's why they would a lot of times would take flour because then they can make a bigger meal with a pound and a half of flour as opposed to a pound of bread. So somebody would be in charge of making the cakes while someone cooked all the meat. I said earlier the thing the campfire cakes was another word for but the pancakes that they made was really popular, and like Jack brought up, if you were lucky, someone bought some spices to add to all this. Otherwise you had a very land meal compared to what we know today. Obviously. The other thing they loved doing at night is they played games. And I found this really interesting researching this, I was like, what kind of games were popular then? So there were two that were the most popular in camp. Can we guess these real quick before? Please? I'm gonna say. I'm gonna guess first, Hide and Seek and Duc Duck Goose. That's exactly what I was gonna say. No, I was gonna say something like dice or something. I don't know. Well, the two games was a dice game. It's called Hazard and it was basically an early form of craps, but strangely more difficult than craps. I don't know how to play craps, and they're time. I try to read how to play it, I get a headache. Apparently hazard is a more complicated form of that, as President called it vaults. You know, they would have played duck dout Goose. They could have also had some of their training and yeah, like hiding and from the enemy and shutting around. I guess, And yeah, there's a strategy to duck Doug Goose. There is. You know, it's a mental and physical aspect, so it's a psychological game more than anything. So they played craps and what was the other one? The other one was a game called whist uh spelled w h I s T. If you have played Yuker, ever, it's essentially Uker, a trick taking curve game. Uh. The only major difference between Whist and Uker is to use every card in the deck, as opposed to just the was it nine through ace in U use all of them and whist also you have a hand of thirteen. We're gonna skip over the fact that your family used to play so much. You create and I and I never once learned how to play that. Luckily who we played you multiple times a night. Actually, I think our one of our brothers was in the You know how some schools have like a chess team. He was a part of like a Yuker team. I think he made that up, honestly, he may have. He's only this one, but I never followed up. It is a big thing in your It is a big thing, and I just still had the tension span to play cards at all. That's why I said that. But Uker is a big thing. So yeah, I'm sure you let read that, Luke, and you get a little hard point and feeling that. I mean, it's a fantastic card. Yeah, it's kind of like you know Rummy. You know if you ever played Jen Rummy, right, I like that. I've only heard well, the problem that those games the thing is, the thing is as you thought, it was actually called Lucre when you first started playing it. So that that's why you liked it so much? Yeah? Absolutely, why So day to day life in the camp was kept under control with really strict punishments. Actually to a point that I wanted to do this whole episode based on one of these punishments. But anyway, So like small infractions such as like shirking your daily duty and chores, you were punished with a caning in front of everybody, in front of everybody. Yeah, is this like something that George Washington brought to the table. He was a fan of keeping morale or keeping people in check. Strict check. All right, yeah, keep me going to check with with punishments. But larger infractions would end a public execution. Things just got okay. So like, gott to give you an example, like, because a cane is pretty bad, what would be a large Like what would you have to do to make that large category? I'm glad you asked, because this is the reason why I brought this all up. So if you did not use a vault when you defecated, I believe, or not straight to execution, Like what would you do? Until alternative that if you just defecated on the ground, and what if you went to the woods, it would if they caught you, it'd be execution. So the other question is, you know, does a bear do that in the woods? Well, a colonial soldier does. We've got standards. You're gonna shit in this hole? It's basically yes, I read that. I was like what But then I thought about it, and there's a reason behind it, and it Lets prevent disease and sickness anything and get it into the ground water or the river water. Because of all the soldiers that died during the war, only ten percent died from battle. The rest died from disease, sickness, and infection. And definitely believable for that crazy right, this, this is what we'll get you killed. But that's what they did. So there's documented cases of this happening. Yeah, I I they did. Yeah you think John Brown would have defecated in on the ground and very dressiful. I'm sure he would have. Yeah, he would. Well, he would have gone away with it though. I mean, he's John Brown man. That so okay, So let me get let let me dive deeper to this vault. Yeah, a terrible place. Yeah, so how did you Okay, So, if you're defecating in a vault, which sounds terrible, which is a hole in the ground, basically it's covered up. So are they going down into the vault to defecate? Are they defecating down like into it through an opening? Yeah? So what they do is they dig out a big cavernish thing and then they put h wood planks across with slits in them, and then you defecate, yeah, and up through that. So it's like a modern day porter potty. Yeah. So nobody went down inside of the vault, no, because they would just bury it after it got too full, and you build another volt, dig another volt, gotcha. So when you said that earlier, I thought they were like going to use this for like fighting. I guess they're fighting something, but it's not war, so that they're okay. I see how you did that there. I thought, I wonder, like, whose job is it to maintain the vault the vault to make those important decisions on when to bury the vault to monitor I believe what I've read that was kind of like a camp shared duty. Uh Basically, uh, if you saw that it was full, you, you and your mess of guys would would uh cover it and then start digging the next one. You're on vault duty to night boys. So it's kind of like, you know, when the trashities be taken out and there was stacks up as much as they can to avoid taking you know, want to take it out. I would be concerned, like that moment when we cover up the previous vault and we don't have another one, and like what if you got to go? You know, you're how many voters they have ahead of time? Dig that vault fast because your life is on the line. I believe they dug out several at a time, so really really using several of the time, or it's only one. This is a lot of questions they use that they they would dig a few, so I would have assumed that they have a few. So maybe like the group that you're mentioning had their own volt. I don't believe it was just that few amount of people, but it's probably one for like fifty or so people public restrooms. Yeah, I might dig my own volt. That was daily life in a camp for a soldier, but they weren't always in a camp, and when they were on the march, they had to take everything that they needed with them obviously, So when you were on the march for a day, which would be about eight hours every day, you'd be carrying about forty five pounds of gear that would be your rifle, your bullets and powder, rations, mess kit, canteen, blankets and stuff like that on your back and it's a very uncomfortable, you know, bulky and knapsack that you would have, and it would, uh, you know, be up just a kind of a horrible situation marching that long. And then on top of all that, the food that you had while you were marching was even less appealing than what you had in camp. Instead of bread, you would have hard tack, which is a dry cracker kind of thing, like I don't know if you've ever seen it, but it is so hard that you could actually break your teeth. What they would do is they would put that into their canteens. Let's soak up the water so they could kind of like slurp it down and drink it over time, or they would boil it at night, you know, like a make a a porridge out of it. The other thing they would get is, say, you know, the fresh beef was either dried beef or pemmican, which is dried beef as stored inside of fat. Yeah, let's go back to the million dollar question of the defecating because there are a lot of people listen to there are several I'm surprised the number of people who listened to this podcast, and I feel like I got to do justice, and feel free to contact me if you are just as curious as I am. What were the rules of defecating on the go? We're able to find that in your hours and hours hundred jars research of defication. So they would do it dig a kind of a quick short fault, like it would be like smaller, not as deep, so that they don't have to just be at the end of the day or beginning of the day. They would dig out a quick trench and you would use that and then bear it. They took bathroom breaks. Yeah, what happens if you, you know, you ate some bad dry beef and whatever. That other thing you said was can I remember now? And you really had to go. You just got to hold it in. So there was a lot of people who I believe you had read a few times of people who had to break away and sneak away and dig a hole and do it themselves real fast, and they had to give back in line before anyone noticed. But these were just like passing mentions. Though I don't know how often it happened, I'm sure it happened pretty often, but yeah, basically you would just try to speak away while your your lieutenant wasn't looking and then dig a hole and go, Man, this sounds terrible. So they didn't carrying shovels or they I mean everybody did have their shovel or something like a lot of times you would you would have some sort of entrenching tool. It would be like some sort of a little shovel sounds like a noisy thing to do to well, you got you remember, you got a whole comforty guys with like frying pans on their back walking making clan noises. You probably won't get hurt. This is uh, it's a matter of life or death. I think Jock said it best. Yeah. Yeah, and I would Uh, I would be like I would cover for people. I'd be like, oh, yeah, he definitely he definitely dug a hole. He got he got, he'd definitely small. I'm diging a hole. I watched him the whole time. You'd have to look out for each other. Yeah, you would have to be a really kind of horrible person to just like turn someone in. Yeah, can you imagine that Benedict Artif would have definitely trained somebody in bitty dick. Uh, I'm not gonna lie ever since you brought up this. I haven't heard anything else. I just keep thinking about how it is. It is, but I get it. It's a matter of personal hygiene, which is important, but man, like this is like these like these are stricter rules than like just going hunting in the woods. Yeah. Yeah, And it's just actually, like I said it, while I was like, oh, this is the episode we're doing this week, Well, I talk about this because I found out this fact. Jock. You're smiling really, big guy, What it's going through your mind? You know, other than the audio and the audio in secretes but other than that. Yeah, I'm just I'm just I'm just thinking about really glad we have indoor plumbing. I just like I've gotta wonder how much because like I gotta wonder how much this strell is George Washington, like he's gotta come in, he's gotta turn things around, he's gotta prioritize the fecal manner of which we're well, what if it was what if it was like just terrible? What if they were just like rampant and like what are you guys doing at least like a hole? Yeah? Yeah, like what was happening before where they had to like make a role where I will I will kill you if you keep doing this, You're done. Like what were these guys doing the shipping? I'll over each other like this is extreme. Franklin was. I was heavily involved with George Washington's reforms how camps were around, and Ben Franklin was kind of like an early pioneer in terms of hygiene and stuff like that. So he never mind, Yeah that's what they say on the office. It's like something like that's a great topic or something like that. But yeah, it's definitely a He was definitely influence Washington to, you know, make sure that they were strict on these things. And then I'm sure a lot of this Hall came from Washington when he took over. You think he said in like progress reports back on to Ben Franklin on the cleanliness of the ways conducting this, I assume. So I actually I don't know if there's anything like that, but I would actually be curious if if there was like some documents that specifically stated, like I don't know, maybe how many people were executed for this, you know, that would be an interesting number to now what do you say? Okay, so if you do go as far to execute somebody for this, what do you say to the family. That's a good question. This guy. You did not understand how often this guy would defecate. We had we had to shoot him, like how could you how could this be accepted? Like it'd be devastating. That's a good question. I would like to see the letter home that was written explain why this person was executed. Soldiers when they were drilling had to learn how to fire the bullets rapidly. They were the goal of firing your musket wasn't so much to be accurate. He was to fire a lot of them. So the number one thing they trained was how fast do you reload and fire again? And you had to get it up to four bullets per minute. Some people who are rapid fire like specialists, they get up to five or so per mintent and that was considered to be amazing. Uh. It's interesting now that kind of fire rate would be absurdly slow, but for at the time that was pretty good, like four per minutent. It's crazy. This is something that the British was known to be excellent at fire Raider, yes, I believe they were at the time, were the fastest of reloading and firing again. And that's why they were so great at winning battles because they could break the enemy lines quickly with just a volley after volley of musket balls. For those of you listening, I hope you leave these clicking sounds that it's also yes, Jack is investigating something. Yes, my keyword is really really loud. You look at the world rankings of muzzleoader reloading or of the British. The British musket uh firing rate was three to four permitted. So so they're trying to get him up to British standard basically British or slightly better. Yeah. So in the day to day camp life, thing that is not as talked about as much is if you had a family and they lived in the area, you were allowed to have them live with you in camp, and wives were given a half ration half daily ration, and kids were getting a quarter daily ration. The wives could earn another half ration by doing work in the camp as like laundresses or cooks and so on. So this was that a lot of people liked a lot because they could have their family near them at first. Anyway, usually though you would march away and you wouldn't have them anymore. I wonder if this is a I don't want to hold this up forever, but I know it varies greatly. But how long would they typically stay at a camp, do you think? So? That would obviously depend on whether or not they were planning on camp painting or attacking somewhere. Sometimes, like during the winter, they would hold up almost the entire winter in that camp. Otherwise they would march after a couple of weeks. And obviously certain areas where they were under siege, they were there for a while. You got anything else there, I'll just keep ASKINGO. I have a lot of questions, so I'll let you do what you're doing. So there is one other thing. It has to do with the women in the camp. Washington was strict about another thing. He made sure that there were no prostitutes allowed anywhere near the camp. If you broke this law, you would have a severe beating. I mean, compared to those other punishments. I guess that's not so bad. Wow, I don't know what ilse to say. It was not as a baud as shitting on the ground. Yeah, you didn't get executed. I guess it was still fairly strict. Yeah, everybody, that's a lot of people to get beat take a beating. Yeah. Like I said, it was also mostly done. And the name of controlling infections and disease it was, you know, something they had to curtail. They didn't want people coming in that they didn't know. On top of that, they didn't want any sexually transmitted diseases to have in the camps. All these things would have cut the ability of the war machine to be able to fight. At this point, there was probably about twelve thousand Colonial army. It never got bigger than seventeen thousand. A total one hundred and seventy thousand different people had fought in the army throughout the entire war, but it never got bigger than about seventeen thousand at any point. And so like, if you lose like ten percent to do illness, that would totally wreck your ability to fight. Is it as a question, tim what else do you got? That's about all I have. I would like to get a little bit of an update on Abraham Whipple if I would like to hear about, Well, we didn't really go through further in the timeline. I suppose I could say in the Revolutionary War were on the topic of food. I gotta says Wifle was a wild man. We already know that, but uh he So, just like generically speaking, navy, I guess the Continental Navy during the Revolutionary War would be fed very similar to most other navies, which is like rations of meat and what they call ship's biscuit, which was basically hard attack. I'm not really sure what the difference between hart attack and ship biscuits, other than to help dry the bread. They would leave it out in the open so that like the salty air would dry it out even more. But they would come up with dishes that they'd come up with names for the dishes, and some people believe that they're silly sounding just because they wanted to have some fun with it. So some recipes will be called lobscouse and dandy funk. I think dandy funk sounds like a very modern like joking name, but apparently they would they used that, and it was basically just both of these were kind of like just variations of breaking up the ship biscuit and putting some meat and water and boiling it. But they're a little bit different. But for the most parts of the same, they just kind of came with a funny name. So it seems like they were having a little bit more fun on the boats that they were in the barracks is or wherever. They're just setting setting sail and line ships on fires and having all sorts a good time. Apparently that's a good update. I'll whipple though, question time, right, Yeah, it's question yeah, okay, So this is more of a uh, dark sort of question, I guess. So obviously we talked about death, and that would definitely happen as they went along these marches to these different camps and just as time passed by, how would they handle a death of somebody, like, ritually speaking, do we know what they would do? So they would usually do a burial. If they were near a town, you would be buried in the cemetery of that town. And you know, this was you know, in the Middle Colonies, so a lot a lot of times they were near some sort of village. But if they weren't, they would actually dig like a camp graveyard, which would happen occasionally. There's definitely people who were buried out in the woods when they died on a march there. I've seen some journals mentioned that, so it was it was more of a matter of where location. If you were, like I said, if you had a cemetery nearby within days walking distance, you would probably take them there. Yeah, you know what, you know this we talked about the preventative stuff they did, but this still happened, that still occurred, still had disease. Winter was a particularly really brutal time. Going back to what you'd said earlier, So they're kind of supplying their own clothes and all that. I mean, you go into and there are places they get really freaking cold, so they're they're still not supplied clothing really, no, no, no, no clothing was supplied. In fact, one man wrote in his journal that during when in Valley, when they were hold up in Valley Forge, his socks had all been like rotten and torn away, and so he had no socks inside his shoes. What he was you know, So went out there and not cold and that was one of the coldest winters on record at the time. And so yeah, dra all this, if you didn't have the money for clothes saved up, you could seriously freeze that and a lot of people did. Yeah, uh terrible, So okay, so I want to pivot a little bit here. This had to have a big impact because they're going across the country. They're going in these communities had to have a like First of all, just imagine like a shit ton of soldiers setting up camp near your house, near your city. It had to have an economic impact as well, because I'm sure if you needed supplies and stuff like that, you'd have to get it at these certain I'm just gonna say cities. I don't know a better way to phrase it. But there had to be an impact on the places they're going to. Yes, it did have an economic impact. It would be like a caravan of these guys coming in and they would just buy up all the food or that they wanted extra or clothing. So some towns really enjoyed this because they had a chance to sell some of their excess stuff. Some places hated it because this was going to possibly take away from the townsfolk who needed stuff, so they would raise the prices when these soldiers were incoming. So it really was a dependent on the area. Again, but it could either be a welcome site or a very unwelcome site. They soldiers marching man. Another thing is like to think about is this wasn't a whole lot different over the course of history, like before this point or wherever, like armies would be like moving around even if you hear or read about like old like ancient Roman military forces like moving from city to city or preparing for something or you know, a march or something like that, and they would then arrive in town they would do very much the same thing. They would buy a bunch of animals, livestocks that they put back at camp. They would buy, you know, any amount of necessities like bowls and cups and clothing and things like that. So as far as like moving military that would have like money to spend. This was this was not unheard of. Butter how they like got you the money too, would around like if you're on the move her, you gotta get these funds to buy things, you know. So they didn't always get the money. That wasn't it you. They would always be like give you basically I owe you, and you would just have to accept that and then you would have to hope that later on they would catch you up. And you really didn't have too much of a choice because if they didn't, if you left, you'll be a wall, it'll be executed. Excima, do what you gotta do. I guess keep people there. What are happened to? People actually would just run away a lot. Dessert show is a big thing throughout the entire Revolutionary War on both sides technically, but it definitely happened a lot with the yeah, the colonial army, and like you know, there was a lot of backcountry that people could just escape to. And I the last question I have. We talked about the illnesses and all that. Do they have a lot of trade medical personnel that were participating in these camps or on the move or you always had uh what would be the equivalent of a doctor at the time on hand at least one. They did what they could. They inoculation was a known practice for smallpox, but it was not a socially accepted practice, and so they did usually practice inoculation in the camp, even though they really should have because a lot of people die just from small pox. You explain what that is. The way they did it. You would take a bit of the flesh of the person a person who had smallpox. You would take it from one of the postules on their body, and then you would slip it into the body of a person who does not have it by cutting it into their arm and then slipping it up in there with like a stick, passe. That would give you a small dose of the virus, which then your biby would build antibodies. It did work. It didn't work one hundred percent, but it did work a lot. But it was considered to be somewhat unclean of an action. Yea, So it was not practiced openly and only certain people who did it, and they were kind of outcast when they found out you did anoculation. Yeah, this is something that's talked about a lot though. You hear about them doing this, So it's kind of like a vaccine with a stick, which very vaccine basically. Yeah. Yeah, because it didn't work sometimes, you know, obviously some people died, some people just got you know, they just got it the fox, and even thof did survive would probably be like permanently scarred. Wherever the inoculation or whatever you want to call it took place. You can't crap in the woods, but I'm going to stick a stick in you with smallpox on it. Yeah, Yeah, it's very rough. Oh man, this has been an interesting episode though, obviously focused. I probably never focused on defecating so much in any conversation that I've ever had, But in all seriousness, it was like a way to restore discipline in order. And I get I guess you could say, try to take care of the bigger picture as a whole. I'm stretching here to figure out how to phrase it. Yeah, that's not too far off. Like it was. If you absolutely needed this group of people to fight a specific way in order to win, you would do almost anything, And so these strict crackdowns on everyone's practices were the only way that they could think of to keep everyone in line and keep everyone alive. Is also kind of like the defining difference between the Continental military and say something like the Green Mountain Boys, who may have been effective, but they were certainly not very organized, so it's unlikely that they would be able to like win the war. Did they definitely deliver that for you think? Oh sure, I'm sure that. Trying to alast thought of what I was going to say originally, I think it's okay at it now. It's important to note, though, like you said, I don't know how long would go between battles or even fights. Like could be like months and months right without any actual battles, so that half of the bat more than half of the battle, was actually a survival. Yeah. Actually because like the siege of Boston before they actually attacked, after Washington got there was another six months such a long grind you literally had to survive in between battles. Yeah. Also, what you could forage or a farm as an army, I guess just for me, it's like you really would have to make an extended effort to stay disciplined, stay together and all that, because you're not just going to battle every day. He really is such a bigger process than that that that's why they focused on a lot of these things. Yeah, for sure. It's more than just like the adrenaline or whatever that would get you through the moment of a fight, because you know that's not gonna last for six months or three years or however long. You know, each individual soldier was supposed to be there. They needed some kind of constant that there was no like walking away from this. They had to really become like a one, one unit with one purpose kind of thing. What a conversation, a lot of ups and downs, and it's just crazy to think about how they had to conduct a business I guess back then, and just how life was back then. We have our challenges that every day, but man, it's just I can't imagine the amount of ground they would cover also while doing this. It's just it's remarkable. This has been a really interesting conversation, and I'm glad that you guys picked this as an episode. I guess it's something that I really hadn't thought about before. I don't know, I'm maybe speaking for myself, but yeah, this was a actually a funner one for me to research. I really enjoyed it because, like it's something that people don't talk about that often, you know, like you see a million documentaries on the History Channel about all the you know, Washington and everyone else, but like when I was out to the person who's actually doing the fighting, they kind of get glossed over. Yeah, And like the guys running the show and founding Fathers Congress, how everyone afraid. So they had probably really no clue what these what these men were going through with the families everybody, but they probably didn't have any clue what it was like on the front line or not to the extent that it was. Yeah, there's there's there's no way. So they're like, you are gonna fight with dignity, We're gonna follow these standards, are gonna follow these rules, and uh, they have no clue what the conditions were like. And I'm sure how difficult it was to maintain order. Yeah, And I'm I mean, I'm sure that they probably heard some stories, but you know, like like even today, it's difficult to even really apprehended even when you hear it. So that's probably you know, as far as the extent that they got. They may have heard some stories, but that's about as much as it could be. So to actually live that is an entirely different thing. What a thought provoking conversation. I hope everybody's enjoyed it as much as I have. Just yeah, I guess just take a few minutes to really think about that and how this come into play. And for me, it's just survival. Just surviving as long as you can was so much of the effort outside of the battle. It's crazy to think about, you know, modern war. Now you see these terrible things happening today a couple of different countries. Just it's the grind of survival internally and just inside that group was insane, so thought provoking conversation. You guys had a good job picking this one out. We'll go ahead and segue now towards the end we've been going on here. It's been a good conversation. I appreciate it. Guys, if you want to learn more, maybe Jack, we'll get some more information up on americastories dot us about the episode. Maybe he can find a couple of pictures of bolts. Yes, maybe he can find a couple of pictures of the food that I don't even remember because all I took away from this was the bleakness and then the volts. Yeah, maybe we can share some of that information. That'd be cool. Absolutely. I actually have a letter that I feel like we should share on the website from a wife that wrote to her husband that was at war while he was away. It was from the sane Well it's a longer what letter, but we should definitely share it on the website. Yeah, and let us know your people are listening. It's remarkable that listening to the three guys just talked us history. Let us know what you think. Get a hold of us. Tell us if you love us, tell us if you hate Jack hate his microphone as much as the rest of us do. Let us know a lot we do puus. They put a lot of work into researching this. I have to kind of fine tune the audio then they edit it out. So it's always good to hear back when you're putting the work in. So again, I appreciate it. Alod listening, and I'll go ahead and turn it to Jock. Yes, if you have questions, as far as you can message us through our email, which is that's one second, I'll say that way you're looking, I've got another challenge for Jack directly. Yea. Not only does he need to give me episode title and show notes. Yeah, I think we need to get a good Facebook page group going these America Stories try to get people's suggestions on stuff they want to hear, kind of like another community to discuss some of this stuff. I think it's something to think about. Yeah, I agree. I agree. So, but in the meantime, they can't use the Gmail which is America Stories Pod at gmail dot com. And you know, while we're getting that Facebook page all set up, or they can follow us on Twitter or x whatever it's called now at America Story Pod and Uh yeah, you can find us wherever podcasts are found and in our website. This is the slowest, the slowest plug ever the websites Americastories dot us. Luke your closing thoughts. Jock's done for the night. You know, I just I like reading about normal people in history as so like I feel like more people need to do that. You need to read more just just the big names, more than the you know, the the name brand Coca Cola of historical figures. You need to read about some of the lower little people and it because it's definitely makes you feel more connected with the history. You got to connect with the Fagos, you got to connected with the the the Kroger. The RC sounds really good. Okay, Yeah, I'm gonna take us home here. I'm gonna send this home packaging with what I always say until in the meantime, keep being you, keep being great. You got the kind of fix everybody knows. Brother around there, food and going at your hair, and you lock him finding the road and you do that's wrong. People got a bang, all the dangerous find it inside. The the best two of us take care what they want. Like I said to them, some of us do the best we can. Some of us do the best we can. Jeff Townsend, media sees you. Good night. And the question is do I stay here? Will you be back? Are you going to come back? Will you be back? Are you coming back?