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

Chapter 44: XLI

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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.

XLI

Camp Beaufort,

Charles Co., Md., Feb. 9, 1862.

FOR a day or two I have been laid up with a bad cut on my foot, which I got chopping wood for my tent. I can not get a boot or a shoe on, but hope it won’t bother me a great while. I guess—in fact almost know—that we are to leave here soon. Gen. Hooker has been to Washington to confer with the commanding General. Rahn, our Commissary Sergeant, thinks we are going on an expedition to Galveston, Texas. Wouldn’t we have a time down there among those Spaniards, Greasers, Negroes, and those perfectly awful Texas Rangers!

Damon has not got back yet. We have a letter from him saying he was at Lunenburg, Vt., laid up with a lame leg.

We have been rigged out with new uniforms. Dark blue dress coats with light blue cord trimmings, and light blue pants.