In 1972, the U.S. Army taught me what it means to be thirsty. I was an eighteen-year-old member of “A-2-2! The best damned company at Fort Dix, New Jersey, Sir!” It was late July. Ninety degrees in the shade. A large water bag hung nearby. But an earlier company of grunts had drained it. My only water consisted of what remained in my canteen.
We trainees of Company A’s 1st Platoon laid out our gear in a neat line on the hot Jersey sand as we prepared to take positions on the rifle range. I had self-rationed my water during the long march out. My throat was parched but I resisted the urge to drink. My meager quantity would be far more precious once I returned from “qualifying” in the scorching sun with my already red-hot-to-the-touch M16 rifle.
When the shooting came to a close and we returned to our gear, my mouth felt as though stuffed with cotton. My throat was dry and sore. Desperate thirst gripped me. But I soon discovered that other young men, while awaiting their turn on the range, had helped themselves to my water. And not one drop remained. Not one drop.
But there’s another true story about thirsty soldiers that makes my experience insignificant by comparison.
In 1864, Andersonville in Southwest Georgia was the South’s most infamous and deadly POW camp during the Civil War. The walled encampment was designed to hold 10,000 men but its ranks had swollen to some 33,000. The POW’s only source of water was a filthy, vermin infested creek that passed through their midst. Not only was the water unfit to drink, it reeked and flowed with disease. Due to the unsanitary conditions, and without consumable water, men were dying by the thousands.
Lieutenant John Maile, a Union POW from Michigan, joined other prisoners singing the doxology— “Praise God from whom all blessings flow …” The men were led by a gaunt Union sergeant named Shepherd who had been a gospel minister before the war.
The small group sang the doxology several times. Then Sergeant Shepherd told them, “I have today read in the book of Numbers of Moses striking the rock from which water gushed out for the ample supply of man and beast. I tell you God must strike a rock in Andersonville or we shall all die of thirst. And if there is no rock here, He can smite the ground and bring forth water to supply our desperate needs. Of this, I am sure; let us ask Him to do this.” (Quote from 100 Bible Verses That Made America by Robert J. Morgan)
The men prayed for about an hour and then ended their meeting by singing the doxology one more time, after which, Shepherd urged them to keep praying night and day.
The men continued to pray for several days.
Then one morning Lieutenant Maile awoke and was astonished by “an ominous stillness” that filled all nature. By mid-morning, black clouds rolled in. Suddenly the camp was deluged by a heavy downpour.
Maile would later write in his memoir: “Crashes of thunder broke over our heads and flashes of lightning swished around us as if the air was filled with short circuits … As the mighty deluge swept through the clearing west of the prison, we bowed our heads in preparation of submersion … When it came upon us the sensation was as if a million buckets of water were being poured upon us at once.”
When the storm subsided prisoners begin to shout, “A spring! A spring!”
With rapt excitement the men described how a lightning bolt had struck the ground inside the camp. Maile wrote: “The vent of a spring of purest crystal water, which shot up into the air a column, and, falling in a fanlike spray, went babbling down the grade into the noxious brook. Looking across the deadline, we beheld with wondering eyes and grateful hearts the fountain spring.” (Quote in part from 100 Bible Verses That Made America by Robert J. Morgan; and in part from a sign on site.)
The men constructed a trough to transport fresh spring water for the thousands of thirsty men throughout the camp.
That very spring still flows at Andersonville to this day. It’s called the Providence Spring and is inscribed with the words:
“God smote the hillside and gave them drink—August 16, 1864.”
Those men believed the WORD and were saved.
Are you thirsty?
Jesus said, “But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall become in him a well springing up unto eternal life.” John 4:14 (ASV)
Jeff Barganier is a novelist, travel writer and speaker. He travels far and wide upon the slightest excuse for something interesting to write about. His novels include Lawson’s Bluff (2021); The Slash Brokers (1998). He also manages Cindy Barganier Interiors LLC (www.cindybarganier.com) at The Waters in Pike Road, Alabama. Contact Jeff at Jeffbarganier@knology.net. You may print out his features at www.jeffbarganier.com and take them with you when you travel!