The Union Drummer Boy

On a Civil War field nobody could hear a shouted order over musketry, so the drum did the talking. Beats told a regiment to advance, halt, wheel, rally on the colors, cease fire. Off the field the drum ran the day as well — reveille, assembly, the call to meals, the beat that put the camp to bed. A boy who knew the calls was not decoration; he was the communications system.

Thousands of them enlisted, some as young as nine or ten, often with a father or older brother in the same company and often without anyone checking the age written down. John Clem of Ohio ran away at nine, was refused, tagged along with a regiment that paid him a soldier's wage out of their own pockets, and ended up a national story.

The job was not safe. Drummers stood with the colors at the centre of the line, which is precisely where artillery aimed, and when the fighting started many of them put the drum down and carried water, loaded muskets or helped the surgeons. A good number are buried in national cemeteries with regiments they were legally too young to have joined.