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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 51: XLVIII
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.

XLVIII

Camp Beaufort,
Charles Co., Md., April 3, 1862.

I HAVE just learned, late at night, that a mail is going out tomorrow morning. It is getting to be very exasperating—these orders to leave, and then having them countermanded. We expected to get off today, and now the announcement is that we are certainly going tomorrow. The transports have been ordered, and temporary piers built to load us from. Captain Bailey has just got along with a batch of recruits. Don’t know yet how many acquaintances I have in the lot.

One of Company E’s men [Luther W. Fassett] was shot by rebel scouts yesterday, on the other side of the river. The company was over there digging up a big gun which the rebels had buried. He was sent back for some shovels, when three rebels stepped into the road and shot him. He had a brother in the same company and a wife and child in New Hampshire.