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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 8: V
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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.

V

YOU have, doubtless, been expecting me every day for a week. I wrote Tuesday throwing out a hint that I might be up Wednesday; but when Wednesday came there was no move to uniform us, and I had to wait. But today something definite has transpired. We are officially informed that an opportunity will be given us to re-enlist for three years or the war, or to be discharged. We can take it or leave it. The Abbott Guard had a meeting this afternoon, and a majority voted to offer the services of the company to the President, for the war. Several of them will not go, but I, of course, could not be dogged back to Manchester while the company is headed for the South. A possible three years from home is a long stretch, but you can be pretty sure the war will not last many months. At any rate, my fortunes are cast with the Abbott Guard, and its fortunes I am bound to follow, wherever they lead.

General Abbott told us, this afternoon, that we should all have a chance to go home and put our affairs in order.