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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 72: LXIX
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.

LXIX

Camp near Alexandria, Va.,
September 29, 1862.

IT is now almost nine o’clock in the evening, and I have had a pretty busy day. And tomorrow I go on picket, which will spoil two days more. So I guess I had better write tonight. This morning, as soon as I had eaten my breakfast, I started off for the Tenth Regiment. Met lots of old Manchester acquaintances, and Billy Cochrane, Ichabod, Sargent Bartlett and I got together and had a real Excelsior Literary Society reunion. On my way back I called in at the Eleventh Regiment camp, and James walked a part of the way home with me.

Tonight “Bobby” [Albert B.] Robinson, who was taken prisoner at the first Bull Run, got back to the company and the reception he got from those of us who are still left baffles all description. A camp story is going the rounds that Gov. Berry is trying to have this regiment sent to New Hampshire to recruit.