The Memoirs of Jarvis Hanks   Jarvis Hanks - biography Memoirs Continued Part 1: Early Life and the Decision to Enlist Part 3: An American farmer's greed; battle in a Canadian farmer's field Part 4: Drilling in Winfield Scott's camp at Buffalo Part 5: At the Battle of Lundy’s Lane Part 6: The siege of Fort Erie Part 7: Very Close Shaves Part 8: PEACE! Drummerboy Jarvis Hanks' account of the Battle of Lundy's Lane Boys at War

Part 2: The Harsh Reality of Army Punishment On the 20th of April, we marched for Burlington, and arrived in four or five days, during which I had a slight foretaste of the fare I was to enjoy in future. Now was the first time I had ever slept on any thing harder than feathers, neither had I eaten any kind of meat unless it was previously well cooked. I now devoured raw pork with greediness and was obliged to sleep, sometimes on hay in a barn, and sometimes on the "soft side of a pine board", as we used to say. When we arrived at camp, our provisions were exhausted, our feet blistered, our spirits low and dejected. I had not been here long, when I witnessed an awful punishment, inflicted on a soldier, for the crime of desertion. His sentence was to have one hundred stripes on his back by the method styled "running the gauntlet", and then to wear the ball and chain at hard labour for the term of five years. Two ranks of men (fifty in each), struck the offender one stroke on his naked back with a green switch as he passed along between them. Soldiers, with bayonets pointed at him preceded and followed so that the poor wretch could neither run nor escape, but was compelled to bear his torture without remedy. The blood ran down his back in streams, which was entirely divested of its integument and presented a spectacle to melt the heart of a stone. A cannon ball, weighing twenty-four pounds, was attached to his ankle by an iron chain about eight or ten feet in length, and he was removed to the guard house to be in readiness to commence his five years' task. It was a scene of great interest to witness the violent destruction of life for the crime of desertion. Two men were hung for desertion in June. They were both placed on the gallows together. When the executioner cut the rope which held the drop, they both fell, one to rise no more, the other, to the ground. The rope broke above his head. He seemed but little hurt. He stood upon his feet, on terra firma, while his companion swung in view, struggling in the agonies of death. A deep groan of horror burst involuntarily from the surrounding thousands of their fellows in arms who had been drawn up to witness the wages of insubordination. They hoped, however, that the living man would now be pardoned, as Providence seemed to have so signally interposed in his behalf. But our hopes were disappointed. At the command of an officer, Jack Ketch tied the fatal knot around the miserable fellow's throat, threw the other end of it over the top of the gallows, and with the assistance of another or two persons, drew him up high enough to choke him to death. We were compelled to remain upon the ground until life was extinct, a period of twenty or thirty minutes.