Then you wonder if some one is thinking of you. You wish you might get a slight wound so you could go home where all would be talking of your bravery. Perhaps it would touch some one’s heart so she would say “yes.”
Then you would think of your present condition; you wonder why it is that such a fellow as lazy Jim Lee should be “commissioned” instead of you, who never “shirked” a guard. You pronounce the war a failure, and would like to see the leaders on both sides hung. You wonder if your regiment will get into another battle to-day, and say to yourself that you don’t care if you get killed (you do though), and then you think of your poor comrade “Dave,” who was killed at your side yesterday morning in a charge on the enemy in that clump of “pines” over there at the right. You put your hand in your pocket and draw forth the lock of hair you cut from his head when his life’s blood was ebbing away, and which he told you to send to his “dear old mother.” You brush the silent tear away that has commenced to course its way down your dust covered cheek.
Then from out the half-light sounds a solitary bugle, like the first wavering note of the roused bird, chirping good morning to its mate. A second bugle answers its reveille. Another and another sound along the line. The drums take up their morning rattle. Soon the air is filled with their deafening jubilee, for they beat with a perfect recklessness at the “get up” time of the camp. The hum of voices begin to rise. The roll call is gone through with. Mules whinner and horses neigh. The camps are alive. The birds sing, and—it is day. There comes the “relief guard.”
A LETTER FROM THE FRONT.
The following is the copy of an old letter yellow with age, that was sent home during wartime.
“In the trenches near Petersburg, Va.
“Sept. 14, 1864.”
“My Dear Friend:
Having a little leisure time I thought I would send you a few lines.
You are aware that I am attached to the 2d N. Y. Heavy Artillery, or as the infantrymen call it, the “2d Weighty.” 1st brigade, 1st division, 2d Corps, under the command of Gen. Hancock; one of the finest looking soldiers in this or any other army, and what is better the boys all love him, and he is proud of his men. If you have kept track of the movements of the army of the Potomac I need not tell you the part that Hancock and his men have had in them.
We are now in camp about midway between City Point and Ream’s Station, and the corps is recruiting up very rapidly. The recruits and convalescents are pouring in by thousands, and we shall soon have a grand army again, and then look out for the splinters. Johnny Reb must talk differently or find his last ditch. The impression here seems to gain ground that the rebellion is about played out, and that there will be but few more months of fighting. Within the past few days the City Point railroad has been extended several miles on our left, and where a few days since no signs of a track were visible, large trains are running regularly. It is certainly very astonishing; but that is a way they have of doing business down here.