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Today In Charleston History: September 14

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1769 – American Revolution – Foundations

The Gazette reported that, excluding Royal officials, only thirty-one inhabitants of had refused to sign the pledge and join the “Association.” The names of the thirty-one were published in the paper and they quickly discovered themselves unable to sell merchandise.

The “Association” was a group of Charles Town men who pledged to support non-importation of any products of Great Britain, and denounced anyone who did not sign within a month. Many of the aristocratic leaders were upset by the surge of the mechanics (carpenters, etc …) in politics, usurped by men they considered their inferior.

william henry draytonWilliam Henry Drayton condescendingly wrote in the Gazette:

No man who could boast of having received a liberal education would consult on public affairs with men who never were in any way to study, or to advise upon any points, but rules how to cut up a beast in the market … cobble on old shoe … or to build a necessary house.

Christopher Gadsden pointed out that Drayton was exempted from labor to make a living due to his “marriage to a rich heiress rather than from any merit of his own.”

The rally cry of the “Association” became “Sign or die!” Over the next several weeks Drayton and Gadsden published dueling letters in the Gazette, with the attacks becoming more personal rather than an exchange of ideas.

Jazz Me Blues – Story of an American Standard (Essentials – Music)

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tom delaney_edited-1Tom Delaney was born in Charleston, South Carolina in 1889 and raised at the Jenkins Orphanage. Founded in 1891 by Rev. Daniel Jenkins, it became one of the most successful orphanages for black children in the South. One of the most famous features of the orphanage was the Jenkins Band, which performed military marching music on street corners and “passed-the-hat” for donations. Delaney performed with the band until 1910. At age 21 he was living in New York City and working as a “whorehouse professor,” playing piano, writing songs and singing in saloons, gin joints and whorehouses in the seedy sections of Manhattan. 

His first big break came when he was thirty-two years old, in 1921. Delaney’s song “Jazz Me Blues” attracted the attention of professional musicians and, more importantly, people who owned recording studios. They were always looking for songs to record, especially now that there was money to be made with “black” songs. “Jazz Me Blues” combined risqué lyrics about sex with a swinging ragtime feel.

The year before, 1920, Perry Bradford convinced a New York record company to record a “black blues” song. Mamie Smith recorded Bradford’s “Crazy Blues.” It sold more than a million copies in less than a year. Suddenly, “black blues” songs were hot. Delaney had written hundreds of blues songs by then, so he began to peddle them to record companies.

tom delaney - blues singers of the 20sDuring this time he met a young singer named Ethel Waters. She performed in vaudeville shows for years as a dancer billed as “Sweet Mama Stringbean.” Waters, however, preferred singing to dancing, and on March 21, 1921, she recorded two of Delaney’s songs for the Pace & Handy Music Company, “Down Home Blues” and “At The Jump Steady Ball.” A twenty-three year old former chemistry student named Fletcher Henderson played the piano for the session. “Down Home Blues” became a hit. Pace & Handy paired Waters and Delaney together and sent them out on tour, Waters on vocals and Delaney on piano.   

Two months later an act called Lillyn Brown and Her Jazz-Bo Syncopaters recorded “Jazz Me Blues.”  That was followed quickly by an instrumental version of the song by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band.  Both versions sold thousands of copies. Through the years more than 100 of Delaney’s songs were recorded by the most popular artists of the day. “Jazz Me Blues” became a standard recorded by Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, Bix Beiderbecke, Count Basie, Jack Teagarden and Benny Goodman.

“Jazz Me Blues” lyrics

Down in Louisiana in that sunny clime, 
They play a class of music that is super fine, 
And it makes no difference if it’s rain or shine, 
You can hear that jazzin’ music playin’ all the time.

It sounds so peculiar ’cause it’s really queer, 
How its sweet vibrations seems to fill the air, 
Then to you the whole world seems to be in rhyme; 
You’ll want nothin’ else but jazzin’, jazzin’ all the time.

Every one that I ever came to spy, hear them loudly cry: 
Oh, jazz me! 
Come on, Professor, and jazz me! 
Jazz me! 
You know I like my dancing both day and night, 
And if I don’t get my jazzin’, I don’t feel right, 
Now if it’s ragtime, take a lick,  play it in jazz time, 
Jazz time! 
Don’t want it fast, don’t want it slow; 
Take your time, Professor, play it sweet and low! 
I got those doggone, low-down jazz-me jazz-me blues!

Jazz me! 
Come on, Professor, and jazz me! 
Jazz me! 
You know I like my dancing both day and night, 
And if I don’t get my jazzin’, I don’t feel right, 
Now if it’s ragtime, take a lick, play it in jazz time, 
Jazz time! 
Don’t want it fast, don’t want it slow; 
Take your time, Professor, play it sweet and low! 
I got those doggone, low-down jazz-me, jazz-me blues! 

To read the entire story of “Jazz Me Blues” and the beginning of American popular music read Mark’s book, Doin’ The Charleston: Black Roots of American Popular Music & the Jenkins Orpahange Legacy.

doin' the charleston

Today In Charleston History: September 13

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1752 – Disaster.
CharlestowneWharf1700s1

Still from the movie, The Patriot, showing Tradd Street (on the right) with some Hollywood CGI magic thrown in.

A hurricane hit Charlestown, with a flood level of ten feet above the previous recorded high water mark. More than 100 died, with twice as many injuries. The South Carolina Gazette reported:

All the wharves and bridges were ruined, and every house, store, & upon them, beaten down, and carried way (with all the goods, & therein), as were also many houses in the town; and abundance of roofs, chimneys, & almost all the tiled or slated houses in the town … The town was likewise overflowed, the tide of sea having rose upwards of Ten feet above the high-water mark at spring tides …

All but one of the ships in the harbor were driven ashore and most of the smaller vessels soon became one with the debris. Sloops and schooners were thrown against the houses of Bay street and the wharves along East Bay street destroyed. A brigantine beat down several houses and wound up on the east side of Church street. Eight or ten small schooners, owned by Charlestonians, and three or four pilot boats were driven into the woods, corn fields and marshes of surrounding areas

David Ramsay, in his History of South Carolina, reported:

Colonel Pinckney, who lived in the large white house at the corner of Ellery street and French alley, abandoned it after there were several feet of water in it. He took his family from thence to… corner of Guignard and Charles streets, in a ship’s yawl. All South Bay was in ruins, many wooden houses were wrecked to pieces and washed away, and brick houses reduced to a heap of rubbish … A brick house where Mr. Bedon lived, on Church street .. Mr. Bedon and family unfortunately remained too long in the house, for the whole family, consisting of twelve souls, perished in the water, except himself and a negro wench. The bodies of Mrs. Bedon, of one of her children, and of a Dutch boy, were found in the parsonage pasture…

1763

During a special election for the Assembly, Christopher Gadsden was elected, but discovered that the election return from St. Paul’s parish was blank. The church wardens had also not taken the oath required by the Election Act. Gov. Boone, citing the irregularities, refused to administer the oath of office to Gadsden, and called for a new Election Act to be written.

Today In Charleston History: September 12

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1718 – Pirates!

Charles Town had been thrown into terror at reports of pirate ships off the coast. Governor Johnson Colonel gave a commission to Colonel William Rhett to organize an expedition to protect Charles Town against  Charles Vane, rumored to be in the area. Two sloops were pressed into service, the Sea Nymph (eight guns and seventy men) and the Henry (eight guns and sixty men.)

1743 – Religion. Slavery. 

Dr. Alexander Garden opened a free school for “educating Negro children,” with more than sixty pupils.

 

1766 – Backcountry

woodmason journalRev. Charles Woodmason returned from England, and was assigned to St. Mark’s Parish on the South Carolina frontier. It was rough country. The parish had a growing population, yet had few roads and even no amenities. Woodmason’s circuit included 26 regular, periodic stops in the parish. In two years he traveled 6,000 miles. He found very little in backcountry life to his liking. The people lived in open cabins “with hardly a Blanket to cover them, or Cloathing to cover their Nakedness.” Their diet consisted of “what in England is given to Hogs and Dogs” and he was forced to live likewise. He wrote:

They are very Poor – owing their extreme Indolence for they possess the finest Country in America, and could raise by ev’ry thing. They delight in their present low, lazy, sluttish, heathenish hellish Life and seem not desirous of changing it. Both Men and Women will do any thing to come at Liquor … rather than work for it – Hence their many Vices – their gross Licentiousness, Wantonness, Lasciviousness, Rudeness, Lewdness and Profligacy. They will commit the grossest Enormities, before my face, and laugh at all Admonition.

1925 – Culture

porgy_dustjacketDubose Heyward’s novel Porgy was published. The story of a crippled beggar on the streets of Charleston was notable because it was one of the first major novels written by a white Southerner through the viewpoint of black characters.  

During a dice game, Porgy witnesses a murder committed by a rough, sadistic man named Crown, who runs away from the police. During the next weeks, Porgy gives shelter to the murderer’s woman, the haunted Bess, in the rear courtyard of Catfish Row, a rundown tenement on the Charleston waterfront. Porgy and Bess fall in love. However, when Crown arrives to take Bess away Porgy kills him. He is taken in by police for questioning for ten days. He is released because the police do not believe a crippled beggar could have killed the powerful Crown. When Porgy returns to the Row, he discovers that while he was away Bess fell under the spell of the drug dealer Sportin’ Life and his “happy dus’.  She has followed Sportin’ Life to a new future in Savannah and Porgy is left alone brokenhearted.

1926 – Death. Culture. 

jenks001Edmond Thornton Jenkins died in Paris at age 32 from pnemonia, due to complications from surgery. The son of Rev. Daniel Jenkins, founder of the Jenkins Orphanage, Jenks (as he was called) had graduated from the Royal Academy of Music, was living in Paris as a musician, playing in jazz clubs and working as a composer.

Jenks’ former music professor at Morehouse College Benjamin Brawley stated:

Let us remember this: he not only knew music but at all times insisted on its integrity. For him there was no short cut to excellence. He wanted the classic and he was willing to work for it. He felt, moreover … that there was little creative work in the mere transcribing of Negro melodies. For him it was the business of a composer to compose, and he did so … The music of the Negro and of the world suffered signal loss in the early death of Edmund T. Jenkins of Charleston, South Carolina.

Today In Charleston History: September 11

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1700

The Council elected James Moore governor of Carolina in a power coup led by the Goose Creek men, usurping the senior Landgrave, Joseph Morton, Jr.  

Moore originally arrived in Carolina in 1675 from Barbados, married one of Sir John Yeaman’s daughters and became a member of the Goose Creek faction, opposed to the Fundamental Constitutions. The Dissenters contested Moore’s “unjust election,”but the Lords Proprietors saw to it that Moore remained governor, and they made it clear that the Dissenters were no longer in favor.

1024px-OcmulgeeRaid

Col. James Moore leading a raiding party against Native Americans.

Moore became the leading Indian trader in the colony. His father was Roger Moore (Rory O’More), one of the leaders of the 1641 Irish Rebellion against the anti-Catholic Puritan forces and evidently inherited his father’s rebellious nature.

On news of the outbreak of Queen Anne’s War in 1702, he led 500 colonists, 300 native allies, and 14 small ships on an invasion of Spanish Florida along the coast devastating the lands around St. Augustine. While the town of St. Augustine was razed, its central fortress, Castillo de San Marcos, where the Spanish and numerous allied Indians had taken refuge, resisted Moore’s siege. The 1702 campaign was viewed as a disaster due to the failure to take the fortress and the expenses incurred, and Moore resigned his post.

1826

James Petigru’s first born child, eight-year-old Albert, while playing inside the house, fell over the bannister thirty feet down the stairwell and was killed. His death devastated the family. Petigru’s wife, Amelia, deteriorated, suffering from severe headaches and became addicted to opiates.

Today In Charleston History: September 10

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1785

Henry Laurens wrote about the wasteful use of live oak trees across South Carolina. The words come across as eerily prophetic in more ways than just environmental responsibility:

The day is not distant in the long tract of Time, when we shall be stripped of that essential article [live Oaks]. The Europeans will laugh at us, our Children will rue the folly of their Fathers.  For every live Oak you cut down you ought to Plant ten young trees … but few of us Southern Americans have patience to look forty years forward, we are for grasping all the golden Eggs at once. 

1860

Charleston Mercury: 
“A wife should be like a roasted lamb – tender and nicely dressed … And without sauce.”

1903

Scene in Hampton Park Charleston, SCTrolley cars made their first run on the new Hampton Park loop. Hampton Park had just opened to the public and was drawing huge crowds of people from downtown Charleston. At this point two Charleston trolley companies were operating 30 horse-drawn trolley cars daily.

Hampton Park was built on the site of (and out of the dismantling of) the Expo Grounds that had closed the year before. 

Trolley-On-Rutledge-Avenue-North

Trolley car on Rutledge Avenue. This route ran all the north to Hampton Park.

Today In Charleston History: September 9

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1670 – Carolina Colony

The Carolina sailed to back to Barbados for passengers and supplies. A letter asking for a clergyman was written and signed by Florence O’Sullivan, Stephen Bull, Joseph West, William Scrivener, Ralph Marshall, Paul Smith, Samuel West, Joseph Dalton and Governor Sayle.

            Florence O’Sullivan also wrote a letter to Ashley Cooper:

… the country proves good beyond expectation, abounding in all things, as good oak, ash, deer, turkeys, partridges, rabbits, turtle and fish; and the land produces anything that is put into it – corn, cotton, tobacco … with many pleasant rivers … pray send us a minister qualified according to the Church of England and an able councellor [lawyer] to end controversies amongst us and put us in the right way of the managem’t…

            Joseph West wrote to Ashley Cooper, with a warning:

Our Governor … is very aged, and hath much lost himself in his government … I doubt he will not be so advantageous to a new colony as we did expect.

1739 – Slavery – The Stono Rebellion.

The largest slave revolt in the British colonies prior to the Revolution took place about 20 miles from Charleston.

stono markersstono_rebellionLed by an Angolan named Jemmy, a band of twenty slaves organized a rebellion on the banks of the Stono River. After breaking into Hutchinson’s store the band, now armed with guns, called for their liberty.  As they marched, overseers were killed and reluctant slaves were forced to join the company. The band reached the Edisto River where white colonists descended upon them, killing most of the rebels.  The survivors were sold off to the West Indies. More than 40 blacks and 20 whites were killed during the insurrection. 

The revolt led to stricter slave codes with the Negro Act of 1740, dictating such things as how slaves were to be treated, punished, and dressed. It forbade them from assembling with one another or being taught to read or write. The 1740 slave codes were largely unaltered until emancipation in 1865.

      William Bull submitted his account of the Rebellion to the British authorities:

My Lords,                                                            
I beg leave to lay before your Lordships an account of our Affairs, first in regard to the Desertion of our Negroes. . . . On the 9th of September last at Night a great Number of Negroes Arose in Rebellion, broke open a Store where they got arms, killed twenty one White Persons, and were marching the next morning in a Daring manner out of the Province, killing all they met and burning several Houses as they passed along the Road. I was returning from Granville County with four Gentlemen and met these Rebels at eleven o’clock in the forenoon and fortunately deserned the approaching danger time enough to avoid it, and to give notice to the Militia who on the Occasion behaved with so much expedition and bravery, as by four a’Clock the same day to come up with them and killed and took so many as put a stop to any further mischief at that time, forty four of them have been killed and Executed; some few yet remain concealed in the Woods expecting the same fate, seem desperate . . .         

It was the Opinion of His Majesty’s Council with several other Gentlemen that one of the most effectual means that could be used at present to prevent such desertion of our Negroes is to encourage some Indians by a suitable reward to pursue and if possible to bring back the Deserters, and while the Indians are thus employed they would be in the way ready to intercept others that might attempt to follow and I have sent for the Chiefs of the Chickasaws living at New Windsor and the Catawbaw Indians for that purpose. . . . 

My Lords,

 Your Lordships Most Obedient and Most Humble Servant 
Wm Bull 

1776 

The Continental Congress formally declares the name of the new nation to be the “United States” of America. This replaced the term “United Colonies,” which had been in general use. The delegates wrote, “That in all continental commissions, and other instruments, where, heretofore, the words ‘United Colonies’ have been used, the stile be altered for the future to the “United States.”

1920 – Jenkins Orphanage
jenks001

Edmund Thornton Jenkins … Jenks.

Edmund Thornton Jenkins performed a concert at his father’s church, the Fourth Tabernacle Baptist. Jenks (as he was called) grew up performing with the Jenkins Orphanage Band. His father, Daniel Jenkins, had established the Orphan Aid Society in 1891 for the “black lambs” of Charleston. Jenks attended the Royal Academy of Music for seven years in London and became an accomplished composer, pianist, and multi-instrumentalist. After graduation, he returned to visit his family in Charleston and discovered that, after years in Europe, he could no longer live in the South comfortably as a black man.  

THE CITY: A Review

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As a longtime reader (30+ years) of Dean Koontz, over the past decade I have approached his new books with much apprehension. His most recent fiction has become … hopeful and uplifting to some  … cloying and overly-sentimental to me. Sentimentality has always been present in most of Koontz’s fiction. His male-female relationships are so stylized and romanticized they often weaken the story.

cityWith The City, Koontz give us a much younger protagonist than usual – 10-year old Jonah Kirk who is a child piano prodigy – growing up with a blue singer mother, jazz pianist grandfather and a mostly-absent father, who is slowly draws the family into extreme danger. He also meets a woman named Pearl who informs Jonah that she is the soul of the city. Pearl serves almost as an ex deus machina and is one of the more unbelievable aspects of the story. 

The book painfully creeps out of the gate, and rarely has any story momentum … something few Koontz books can be accused of. As much as Koontz tries to get the reader emotionally involved with Jonah and his family, it never happens. Instead, a sense of annoyance replaces any sense of anticipation. And, then … Koontz commits an error that, to me, ran the entire book completely off the tracks.

The story takes place during the 1960s, and Jonah becomes friends with a Japanese-American man, Mr. Yashioka, who lives in his apartment building and spent several years in a WWII interment camp. In a conversation with Jonah Mr. Yashioka uses the phrase “slam dunk.”  He even goes so far as associating it with basketball.  And it stopped me cold. The story was set in the late 1960s when dunking was not allowed in basketball. The phrase “slam dunk” was made popular by Los Angeles Lakers’ announcer Chick Hearn in the 1970s. 

I read the rest of the book with declining interest from that point onward. Unlike most Koontz books, The City has little tension, narrative drive or suspense. Go back and read classic Koontz novels like Strangers, or Watchers.   

2 palmettos

Today In Charleston History: September 8

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1714 – England.

After several meetings with Chief Justice Nicholas Trott, the Proprietors issued an order declaring him:

a permanent member of the Council without whose presence there should be no quorum for the transaction of business, and without whose consent practically no law should be passed.

Trott became the most powerful man in South Carolina: Attorney General, Chief Justice and without his presence, the Upon Trott’s return to Charles Town, Governor Craven and the Assembly were obviously distressed. They wrote: “A power in one man not heard of before … unheard of in any of the British dominions.”

 1782 – American Revolution – The Battle of Eutaw Springs.

This was the last major battle in the Carolinas, and Col. William Washington’s final action. Midway through the battle, Gen. Greene ordered Washington to charge a portion of the British line positioned in a thicket along Eutaw Creek. During the last charge, Washington’s mount was shot out from under him, and he was pinned beneath his horse. He was bayoneted, taken prisoner, and held under house arrest in the Charleston area for the remainder of the war.

1895 – Charleston minister appeared in a London court.
Rev. Daniel Jenkins

Rev. Daniel Jenkins

Reverend Daniel Jenkins appeared in the magistrate’s courtroom on Bow Street, followed by more than a dozen of his charges, all under the age of fourteen. The next day the London Daily Telegraph filed the following story:

Just before the rising of the court, a coloured man entered with a troupe of thirteen little Negro boys whose ages ranged from five to about fourteen years. The man in charge of the boys said he was the Reverend D. J. Jenkins, a Baptist Minister of Charlestown [sic], America, and he wished to make an application to the magistrate.

On entering the witness box, the appellant stated that he had come over to this country to raise funds for an Orphanage with which he was connected in Charlestown. He had brought with him his boys, who all played on brass instruments, and his object was to let the boys play their band in the public streets, after which he lectured and collected money for the Orphanage. He had been stopped that morning whilst thus engaged, and told that he was liable to be taken into custody for what he was doing, and he wished to be informed whether that was so.

Sir John Bridge told applicant that of course he must not cause an obstruction in the public thoroughfares or the police would interfere. Inspector Sara, who was on duty in the court, pointed out that under an Act of Parliament no child under the age of eleven years was allowed to sing, play or perform for profit in the public streets.

Applicant: But could not an exception be made in my case, seeing the object I have in view?

Sir John Bridges: Certainly not. The law makes no exceptions.

Applicant then said he was without money to take the children back to America. Sir John Bridge said he had no fund which was available for such a purpose, and advised applicant to apply to the American consulate. Inspector Sara said he would send an officer with the Applicant to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children where probably he could obtain assistance, and Sir John Bridges gave a sovereign to applicant for present necessities, for which he appeared very grateful.

This news item provoked an editorial on Page 4 of the same issue, which concluded:

Much may be done, no doubt, to raise money for an Orphanage; but to let loose a brass band of thirteen Negro children upon an urban population suffering from nerves is likely to create almost as many orphans as it would relieve.

After the court appearance and subsequent publicity, Jenkins was approached by the owner of a local London theater who offered to feature the Orphan Band on stage. Jenkins agreed, but then changed his mind once he appealed to local churches who eagerly invited him to speak during their services. From the pulpit of the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Jenkins pled for help and more than £100 was raised in a matter of moments. He repeated this successful appeal at several more churches before steaming back home to Charleston, where he paid off the debt.

Today In Charleston History: September 7

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1774

Silas Deane, representing Connecticut in Congress wrote, “Mr. Gadsden leaves all N. England Sons of Liberty for behind, for he is for taking up his Firelock & marching direct to Boston.”

1796 – SLAVERY

A young slave named Molly was executed for arson, after being convicted of “robbing her master, and setting fire to capt. Vesey’s house at the Grove.” In her confession, Molly apparently not only admitted to “being guilty of these crimes, and also that she was the person who set fire to her master’s house at Belvedere.” 

Molly added to the terror by declaring that “she was persuaded to the commission of these atrocious acts by a Frenchman, named Renaud, her master’s gardener, formerly a servant to Mr. Michaud…belonging to the French Republic.”

1864 – BOMBARDMENT OF CHARLESTON

Gen. Foster ordered 600 Confederate prisoners to be placed on Morris Island “as an act of retaliation” for failing to remove the Federal prisoners from Charleston. Gus Smythe, from his look out perch in St. Michael’s steeple, could see, through his telescope the prisoners “in the morning getting their rations & also see the poor fellows looking thro’ the cracks of the fence.”

jail and workhouse, 1865

View of the yard behind the City Jail. To the right is visible the Work House and City Hospital.

By that time Gen. Jones was in charge of 6000 Federal prisoners within the city limits. Most of them were housed in the City Jail at the corner of Franklin and Magazine Streets. Others were housed around the corner in Roper Hospital at the corner of Queen and Logan Streets. The majority were held at the Charleston racecourse. Most of the Federal prisoners considered their imprisonment in Charleston to be a life-saving change, away from the hellish conditions of Andersonville. Lt. Benjamin Calef wrote:

We reached Charleston on the morning of August 13, and were kept waiting a long time in the Street, when I procured some fresh figs, bread and milk, and seated on the curb-stone, made an excellent breakfast … I should not omit to speak of the long piazza at the front [of Roper Hospital], on which I have spent so many hours with my pipe for my companion.

The Confederate prisoners on Morris Island slept beneath a canvas roof to shield them from the rain, and no shade trees. Their daily rations consisted of “three army crackers … and a half pint of soup.”