From "Indian War Battles" (http://1-14th.com/IndianPvtJordan.html) extract from diary of Pvt. William Jordan, Co. C, 14th Infantry.


August 15 [1876]. This proved another hard day's march over a mountainous country. Guard [Grouard] reports numerous Indian trails, evidence that the redskins (the body that massacred Gen. Custer's command) have divided. ... Marched 22 miles. We had a wag of a fellow in my company named James Radcliff, who enlivened the march by his comic songs and remarks. Today he composed a song while marching, which ran something like this:

We went with Crook to the Rose Bud
To fight the Indians there;
We came near being baldheaded,
but they did not get our hair.
We lay upon the ground,
in the dirty yellow mud,
And we never saw an onion,
A Turnip nor a spud.
And there was Corp. O'Donahue
and Sergt. "The-Devil-Knows-Who,
They made us march and toe the mark
in gallant Company Q.
And the drums would roll upon my Soul,
and this is the way we'd go:
Forty miles a day on beans and hay,
In the regular army O.
The entire column would join in the chorus of this song, thus diverting our minds from the hardships of the march.


This is NOT the passage I mentioned previously. So now, to the attic.