The Regimental Band of the 15th MVI

In Ball’s Bluff: A Small Battle and its Long Shadow, B. Farwell includes the following, not too flattering information about the Regimental Band of the 15^th MVI.

"It was difficult for most volunteers to understand military discipline. It was, for example, standard practice in the United States Army (and European armies) at the time – and indeed remained so until World War II – for members of the regimental band to serve as stretcher bearers in combat. It made sense: there was little use for stretcher bearers until there was a fight, and there was no use for a band in battle; the same men could perform the two dissimilar functions. 

But the bandsmen of the 15^th Massachusetts did not understand this reasoning, or chose not to. They protested vehemently when ordered to spend one hour a day learning to apply a tourniquet, to press an artery, or to carry a wounded man. They refused to turn out for the drill and announced haughtily that they would rather die than do such menial work. Their colonel, Charles Devens, a 41-year-old Massachusetts lawyer and politician, was said to posses an "urbane and kindly nature," but he refused to put up with insubordination; he promptly confined the lot, and told them they would get food when they decided to do their duty. None starved. However, soon after, when their services as medics were required in earnest, they balked once more."

All regimental bands were all mustered out of Union service on 11 Aug 1862, the government having decided that they were more trouble than they were worth.

For information on individual members of the 15th Massachusetts Regimental Band, see Roster and Genealogies.