Jonas A. Bigelow, U. S. A.
He was succeeded by General Burnside, and after a week of rest, we started for Falmouth Virginia, and on the 22nd went into camp at Stoneman’s Switch. Here we remained most of the time all winter, although we expected every day to be ordered off on the march again for the unknown “Somewhere.”
I well remember the hungry Thanksgiving day spent here. We were a long ways from our base of supplies at Acquia Creek, and all that we received was brought in wagons for several miles over hard and rough roads from Belle Plain.
For a week we lived on hardtack, and the morning of Thanksgiving day, we received the last of the supplies in our regiment, half a cracker for each man. This was all we had until afternoon; our officers were out all the morning hunting in every direction for food, and at last succeeded in borrowing twenty boxes of hard bread, which was all that the officers and men had that day.
How we thought of home that day and the good dinners that we had enjoyed on former festival days! How little our friends at home would have enjoyed their feast, could they have known that we were starving! In the course of the day I happened to see, near the tent where the officers bought their supplies, (for they did not draw rations like the rank and file,) a few beans that had been trodden down into the mud. I carefully picked them out, and perhaps got half a pint altogether, which I washed and stewed, and with my tentmate, made out our Thanksgiving dinner.
This was not the only time I have gone hungry; many a time have I suffered from hunger from cold, and from heat, but I shall ever remember that particular time, for it seemed to make me still more hungry as I thought of former Thanksgiving feasts, and the food I had wasted. But such are the fortunes of war, and we bore it as we did all other discomforts, as part of the price that must be paid, that our flag might again wave over an undivided country.
Chapter VII.
FREDERICKSBURG.
Of all the terrible sights of war,
The worst and most fearful sight,