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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 71: LXVIII
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.

LXVIII

Camp near Alexandria, Va.,
Sunday Evening, September 21, 1862.

I HAVE been down to the Eleventh Regiment to see James [K. Lane, “the girl’s” brother] and other boys there. I went into the camp, stopped a while at one of the Manchester companies, where I found lots of fellows that I knew, and then started for Co. G to find James, when he bore down on me with all sail spread. I knew him, and he knew me, at sight, and we were just as well acquainted after we had shaken hands as though we had known each other for years.

We are doing a little digging now—just enough to keep our hand in—on rifle pits between Forts Worth and Ward. Our knapsacks, which were loaded onto barges when we left Harrison’s Landing, got here only two days ago. I had begun to think they were gone for good, and was ready to bewail the loss of all my valuables, when they turned up safe and sound.