THE SOLDIER’S FARE.
A lady said the other day, “Tell us in your next what the men had to eat out at the front, how they managed to do the cooking, washing of clothes,” etc.
Well now, the cooking did not bother us one bit, for we did not have anything to cook. When at Cold Harbor we had not had a vegetable for weeks, and beef only twice, and the flesh was so tainted with wild onions, on which the cattle had fed as they were driven through the country, that it could hardly be eaten. Coffee, hard tack, sugar, with a small allowance of salt pork two or three times during a month was what we had to live on.
Money would not purchase anything because the sutlers were all sent to the rear when Gen. Grant crossed the Rapidan.
Each man carried a little tin pail in which he boiled coffee, holding it over the fire with a stick. A quartet of boys who were making coffee one morning at Cold Harbor had their breakfast spoiled by a piece of a shell dropping into the fire.
LAUNDERING ON THE MARCH.
When we started out on the campaign our well filled knapsacks made us the laughing stock of the veterans of the 2d Corps, but gradually we had lightened our loads until we were down to a blanket, half a shelter tent, possibly a towel and a piece of soap, and some little keepsakes, all of which were twisted up in the blanket and slung over the shoulder. When we came to a stream the men would pull off their shirts, rinse them and if no halt was made would put them back on wet, or else hang them on their guns to dry on the march.
IN ANOTHER MAN’S BOOTS.
After a few weeks our shoes were nearly worn out, and in this connection I must turn aside to tell you how one of my comrades came into possession of a nice pair of boots.