Private Godwin to His Mother
On the road to Ledger Corners.
Tuesday the 3d October.
Dear Mother:—
I write on my back in the usual roadside ditch, our column having halted after firing has broken out in our rear. My pack was on wrong this morning, hanging too low, so that the straps cut me; I was glad to stop, so as to adjust it. Usually it is no trouble: in fact in some of the skirmishes I have not thought of it at all except to remark how little it cumbered me.
But the pack can be, I have found, a detriment in case of a fall. Yesterday, going through a boggy wood, with rocks and slimy fallen trees, I slipped and plunged forward. Without the pack I could have saved myself; but the heavy roll, shooting ahead, was just enough to overbalance me and bring me down among the stumps and boulders. To protect my face I twisted as I fell. This brought the pack under me, my head was lower than my hips, the pack wedged in a hole, and I should have had difficulty in rising had not the boys yanked me up.
Our feed at bed time was a success. We were warned of a hard day to follow, the march being extra long, and the road being so unsafe for trucks (on account of weak culverts) that we must carry our own dinners, which we must eat cold. In consequence we were given this morning an emergency ration, consisting of a slice of Bologna sausage, two pieces of dry bread, and two hard boiled eggs. These we put in our meat cans, with such chocolate as we could get from the buzzards; we are carrying them now, and are wondering if the cooks will get to camp in time to give us coffee.
Behind me, after quiet, the fire has broken out again. The boys listen critically. “We shan’t have to go back for that.” There is a whole battalion behind us that can stand off any attack.
(Later.) The hike today has been steady plodding, halting at the regular intervals, also at times of attack from the rear. At first the boys sang a good deal, new songs and old. But the last two stretches, though we have had continual jokes and laughter, have been a persistent grind. For the first time we have had climbing, pretty steady from our start to the height of land, a rise of 502 feet, after which we stumbled down a very stony track till we reached a better road at Halfway House, an uninviting structure between two unknown terminals. We had one fine look-off at the highest point, over a gently descending slope of miles to a strip of Champlain, and beyond, floating above the haze, the Green Mountains of Vermont. Now we are resting again, the boys talking, smoking, studying the map, and singing quietly.