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

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Tuesday Morning.—I tried to write last night, but it was so cold I had to give up. We are camped down in a deep hollow, where the sun doesn’t get in till pretty late. Every morning the ground is white with frost. It takes all our dry goods to keep us anywhere near comfortable, day or night. Our grub is neither rich nor varied, but it appears to agree with me—with what I have been able to pick up on the side. A man who is enterprising can occasionally get hold of a piece of fresh meat. Until last night, since leaving Bladensburg, every man has been his own cook. Our tin plates served very well as stew- or fry-pans, and coffee drank out of the tin dipper in which it was boiled on the coals of the campfire, has a flavor all its own. But last night the company cooks got into action again and served out boiled corned beef, hardbread, and coffee. As it never rains but it pours, our sutler also got along and opened up shop.

Guard duty in this place is not what it was at Bladensburg. Our company goes on picket today down by the mouth of the creek we are camped on [Nanjamoy,] to watch the rebels over across the river. Mail will leave here three times a week.