Stanley later admitted that enlisting in the Confederate service had been ‘a grave blunder’. There would be occasions in the following six years when he wished he had followed his earlier instincts and returned to Wales; but it was too late. He was now billeted in a bell-tent with others from Cypress Bend, including Dan Goree, plantation men, clerks, cotton growers plus a collection of neighbours ‘and a rustic lout or two’.
All too soon the Dixie Greys were on the move to the battlefront, marching through the streets of Little Rock to cheers from crowds of admiring females and worrying amounts of young men yet to sign for the Confederate cause. They carried everything in heavy backpacks – a spare uniform, undergarments, blankets, toiletry articles, plus a heavy musket, bayonet and a canteen of water. The full kit weighed 60lb and after an hour or two marching under the hot August sun, the first flush of enthusiasm soon wore off.
By sunset, the entire regiment was suffering from blistered feet and aching limbs. Older and more experienced soldiers poked fun at recruits limping so badly they lagged at the back of the long line of men. They finally fell into camp after dark and Stanley recalled that ‘pains and aches darted through every tortured limb, feet blistered and bled, our backs scorched and our shoulders inflamed. No bed that I have ever rested on gave me a tithe of the pleasure afforded me now by the cold, damp pastureland.’
The next day was a halt in camp and an orderly suggested that recruits lighten their loads by sorting through their packs and discarding everything not essential on the battlefield. Hundreds of personal items and thousands of little luxuries were thrown onto a bonfire. Stanley threw his share onto the burning pile, but kept his photograph of Henry Hope Stanley and the lock of his hair – ‘very trivial and valueless to others, but my own particular treasures to be looked at every Sunday morning when we smartened up’.
The following week found Stanley in another camp 60 miles from Little Rock. An epidemic raged through the tented village caused by typhoid, swamp malaria, fatigue and meagre rations. Over the following days, fifty soldiers died and the same number lay in hospital tents receiving treatment. Twice as many died the week after without ever setting foot on a battlefield.
Other regiments reinforced the Dixie Greys, including cavalry and artillery. Together they moved across Arkansas, up the banks of the Mississippi where on 7 November 1861 they experienced their first battle at Belmont – as observers, held in readiness on high bluffs overlooking the battlefield and not as combatants. The battle went on for ten hours and the Dixie Greys watched as 641 Confederate comrades were killed and 610 fell on the Yankee side.
Trains and cattle trucks transported the Dixie Greys to Cave City, Kentucky, where they remained encamped until the following February. Soldiers in the area numbered 22,000 men and it was a case of every man for himself when it came to finding decent food. Stanley won a reputation as an efficient scavenger after little items that helped make camp life more bearable.
While exploring the surrounding countryside at Christmas, Stanley was told about a farm owned by a Yankee sympathiser. In one of the meadows he spotted earthen mounds thought to conceal potatoes. From one of the barns he heard the clucking of hens – the perfect ingredients for a festive dinner for Dixie Greys sharing his tent.
Stanley borrowed a mule to help carry the spoils back to the camp, journeying to the farm under cover of darkness. Tying the mule to a tree, he headed in the direction of the earthen mounds and began burrowing into the side with his bayonet. Soon he smelled apples, which were better than potatoes as they could be cooked as dumplings. He half filled a sack and moved to another mound covering a winter supply of potatoes. He raked out enough to fill the sack and then heaved the load back to the mule. It was now time to go in search of a chicken or two.
Stanley discovered the rest of his dinner in the barn, wrung the neck of a goose, a duck and a pair of fowl. It was time to return to his mule, but he heard the unmistakable grunt of pigs in an outbuilding and stole across the meadow to a sty containing plump shoats. The thought of roast pig was irresistible and he climbed into the sty and snatched a piglet by the heels – setting off a terrifying clamour of grunts and squeals from the remaining porkers.
Determined not to lose his prize, with the pig under one arm and the rest of the poultry over his shoulder, Stanley fled through the darkness towards the mule. Suddenly a light appeared in the farmhouse door and a figure emerged carrying a shotgun. A shower of buckshot whistled around his ears that encouraged him to run faster. On arrival at the now loudly braying mule, he slashed the pig’s throat with his bayonet and crammed it into another sack. Still holding the rest of the poultry and with apples and potatoes thumping the side of the animal, Stanley galloped towards camp, buckshot flying through the air. Stanley’s midnight raid provided a Christmas feast for twenty soldiers and, emboldened by success, in the weeks that followed he ventured further into the surrounding countryside to relieve more farmers of ‘excess’ stock and produce.
In February 1862, advancing Yankee regiments forced southern contingents to evacuate their camp and march through the snow to Bowling Green, where they were packed into railway cars and shipped off to Nashville. From there, they marched 250 miles south before climbing into more cattle trucks transporting 55,000 troops to Corinth, the Confederacy’s most important rail junction. There they would defend the Memphis and Charleston railroad from attack – although word rapidly spread that they were soon to spring a surprise attack on the enemy, who had landed on the Tennessee River some 24 miles away, near a log-built Methodist meeting house called Shiloh, a Hebrew word meaning ‘a place of peace’.