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

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

Chapter 20: XVII
By Martin A. Haynes
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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.

XVII

Camp Sullivan, Washington, D. C., July 30, 1861.

JUST to let you know that I was alive and kicking, I wrote a week ago, but did not write half I wanted to. I got a letter from Roger [Woodbury] a few days ago. He has an idea of enlisting in the Third Regiment. I advised him, as he is situated, not to do it. It may seem inconsistent in me to advise him against doing what I myself have done; but he has others dependent on him, while I have not.

Things are getting straightened out so we can now tell about how many men we lost in the unfortunate battle of Bull Run. Our total loss in killed, wounded and missing is only about eighty or ninety. I lost some of my best friends. Mose Eastman was wounded in the leg. I saw him carried to the rear. If still living he is probably a prisoner. Frank Wasley has had a finger cut off. I had a letter from mother today. She says they do not know yet, in Manchester, who is missing, and there is the deepest anxiety there.

By the way, I may as well remind you that this is my birthday, and I am nineteen years old. If some one with the gift of prophecy had told me, a year ago, that at my next birthday I would be in the army and a participant in the greatest battle ever fought on this continent, wouldn’t it have seemed a wild piece of fortune telling?