The quotations below come from The 1865 Customs of Service, which has just been reprinted for the first time in a hundred and thirty-six years by Stackpole Books. The 1865 Customs of Service was the first published "soldier's guide" to the duties and rights of each enlisted rank in the American Army as drawn from custom and regulation. A new edition has just been published by Stackpole Books exactly as it first appeared at the end of the Civil War, containing much practical advice on surviving military service. Topics include nutrition, health, punishment, treatment of prisoners, employment of wives as laundresses, the special provisions for coloured troops, and other fascinating aspects of service during the Civil War. "Fire Low - A bullet through the abdomen (belly or stomach) is more certainly fatal than if aimed at the head or heart; for in the latter cases the ball is often glanced off by the bone, or follows round it under the skin. But when it enters the stomach or bowels, from any direction, death is inevitable, but scarcely ever instantaneous. Generally the person lives a day or two, with perfect clearness of intellect, often not suffering greatly. The practical bearing of this statement in reference to the future is clear. Fire low." "The greatest physical kindness you can show a severely wounded comrade is, first to place him on his back, and then give him some water to drink from a canteen or ambulance-bucket. I have seen a dying man clutch at a single drop of water from the finger's end, with the voraciousness of a famished tiger." "Every soldier should make the art of cooking his study: more disease and deaths are occasioned in an army by bad cooking than by any other cause." Back to Greenhill Military Book News No. 109 Table of Contents Back to Greenhill Military Book News List of Issues Back to Master Magazine List © Copyright 2001 by Greenhill Books This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com