A Minor War History Compiled from a Soldier Boy's Letters to "the Girl I Left Behind Me": 1861-1864

Chapter 124: CXX

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About This Book

A series of wartime letters written between 1861 and 1864 to a loved one presents an intimate account of camp routine, marches, garrison duty, and occasional skirmishes, emphasizing comradeship, small talk, humor, and the routine hardships of soldiers. The editor removed strictly personal matters and arranged the correspondence into sketches that preserve individual personalities and camp anecdotes, recording everyday details—meals, guard duty, uniforms, morale—rather than grand strategy, and offering a ground-level portrait of military life and memory.

CXX

Point Lookout, Md., November 28, 1863.

QUITE a relief it is to us overworked fellows to have the Fifth take their turn at guard duty. We cannot now be called upon oftener than every third day, and probably not as often as that. You need have no uneasiness about small pox here. There is only one case in this regiment, so far as I know. Most of the cases are from the prison camp. The small pox hospital is outside the lines, and the guard are immunes who have had the disease.

Evening.—I have just had a good supper of oysters, and the papers bring us news of a great victory at Chattanooga, so I am feeling pretty well both in body and mind.