Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and DescriptiveBurnett, Alfred
History
Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive
Burnett, Alfred
United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Anecdotes
Your correspondent has been sick. Your correspondent has been in bed;
has had the rheumatism in his back, neck, arms, legs, toes; is down
with the mountain-fever; tries in vain to sleep; howling dog,
belonging to Captain Russell's "brigade," keeps up such an infernal
howling it makes me mad: wish Russell had to eat him, hair and all. It
was raining when I last wrote; think we had just been flooded out.
Well, the very next day we were again ordered over that Godforsaken
road, when the clouds again blackened up, and five hundred men tramped
it. What have the Sixth done that the heavens should open their
floodgates? All I wonder is, how the boys stand it. But they do bear
up under it nobly, remembering the Shakspearian passage, slightly
altered:
"The same clouds that lower upon the house of Abe Lincoln
Look frowningly upon Jeff Davis."
The boys are truly "ragged and sassy;" very many are shoeless, and
with a flag of truce protruding from the rear. The service in these
woods wears out more clothing than ordinary service should. Some of
the boys are careless, but many are, helplessly, nearly naked. Our
officers have used every exertion to get apparel, but the apparel is,
like a paymaster, "hard to get hold of." Our men have been sorely
tantalized by seeing regiment after regiment of the Indiana troops
paid off, before their very eyes. In fact, they have been running
round camp, with five, ten, and twenty-dollar gold pieces, shaking
them in our faces. Add Colwell--Corporal Add--paid an Indiana boy of
the 17th Regiment three slices of bacon and half a pound of coffee
just for the privilege of hefting and rubbing his eye with an _eagle_.
Colwell is a good printer; Colwell is a good writer; and, last and
best of all, he can eat more gingerbread than any other one man in the
army: he wants Wash Armstrong to send him a box of the article.
Since the accidental shooting of Lieutenant Moses Bidwell, by Adams,
of the 17th Indiana, we have had another accident. Mr. Hopkins has had
his collar-bone broken, and his shoulder-blade thrown completely out
of place, by the falling of a tree.
We are having jovial times out here, rain or shine. A convocation of
good fellows met at Captain Abbott's quarters, 3d Ohio. Captain Abbott
is from Zanesville. Captain McDougal of Newark, Captain Dana of
Athens, Captain Rossman of Hamilton, Lieutenants House and Swasey of
Columbus, Lieutenants Bell and Dale of Newark, not forgetting
Miles--the smiling, good-natured Miles--of the 17th Indiana,
Quarter-master Shoemaker, Andy Hall, J. W. Slanker, W. B. Sheridan,
and Self, all of the 6th Ohio, made up the party. The landlord filled
his flowing bowl, and stories, songs, and recitations were the order
of the evening, and the
"Glow-worm '_began_' to show the matin to be near"
ere we started to separate.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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