The “Johnnies” with their threadbare clothing and scant rations suffered everything during the cold winter of ’64-5. Of tea and coffee they had none except in their hospitals. The only thing they had a superfluity of was tobacco, and this they were ready to swap for coffee or anything to eat.
In front of our corps was a strip of woods where the blue and the gray used to meet on friendly terms, cut wood, swap coffee, tobacco, papers, stories, etc.
The reader of this who is of the generation since the war will hardly believe, I presume, that men of the two armies, who had fought each other so hard for more than three years, could meet between the lines without displaying any animosity toward each other, but such occurrences were not rare.
I recall a story about how a “Johnnie” helped a “Yank” carry his supply of wood into the Union lines. The boys were engaged in cooking and when the rebel sniffed the pleasant aroma of Uncle Sam’s old Government Java and other things that were not being furnished by the C. S. A. commissary department, he said: “I’m dog-goned if it don’t seem right smart comfortable here with you’uns and now that I’m here I guess I’ll stay!”
Considering the great privations that they suffered, and the hopelessness of the struggle it is a great wonder that the desertions from their side were not more frequent than they were.
A BOX FROM HOME.
If any of you ever have a father, son or brother in far distant parts, don’t forget to send him an occasional box of good things from the old home. He may have an abundance, but even then he will appreciate the loving remembrances; but if he is undergoing the hardships and privations of a soldier’s life it will touch his heart more than any other act of your life.
Two of our mess were remembered with a bounteous box of good things the Christmas we were in the trenches before Petersburg. Talk about your banquets! Your Delmonico spreads; your nine-course dinner! They cannot compare with that Christmas feast of home made mince pies, fruit cake, plum pudding, old fashioned twisted doughnuts, raspberry jam and other good things from home.
And even those who were without mother or sister at home received through the Sanitary or Christian commissions many evidences that their devotion to their country’s cause was lovingly remembered by the patriotic women of the North.
Those were stirring days, and even the little children worked for the soldiers. Their little hands were busy rolling bandages, knitting and helping the various “Aid societies.”