The Delmonico man might boast of a higher grade of food and better cooking, but the soldier wins on the appetite.
After supper we stood around the camp-fires drying the outside of our clothes, telling stories and smoking. Then we prepared for bed.
The men in the companies are always divided into messes; the average number of men in each was usually about six. The messes were like so many families that lived together, slept together and ate together, and stood by each other in all emergencies. There was no rule regulating the messes. The men simply came together by common consent. "Birds of a feather flock together."
In winter one bed was made for the whole mess. It consisted of laying down rubber cloths on the ground and covering them with a blanket, and another and another, as occasion required, and if the weather was foul, on top of that other rubber cloths. Our saddles covered with our coats were our pillows. The two end men had logs of wood to protect them. Only our coats and boots were removed.
On a cold winter night, no millionaire on his bed of down ever slept sweeter than a soldier on a bed like this.
In the summer each soldier had a separate bed. If it was raining, he made his bed on top of two fence rails, if he could not find a better place. If the weather was good, old Mother Earth was all the soldier wanted.
As this was a cold, stormy night, of course we all bunked together. My, what a nice, soft, sweaty time we had! The next morning all traces of my rheumatism had disappeared, and I felt as spry as a young kitten.
As the day advanced the clouds rolled by, the sun came out bright and smiling, and the command marched back to the old camp-ground, near Harrisonburg.
With every regiment there is a Company Q. Company Q is composed of lame ducks, cowards, shirkers, dead-beats, generally, and also a large sprinkling of good soldiers, who, for some reason or other, are not fit for duty. Sometimes this company is quite large. It depends upon the weather, the closeness of the enemy, and the duties that are being exacted. Bad weather will drive in all rheumatics; the coming battle will drive in the cowards; hard marching and picket duty will bring in the lazy. But then, as I have just said, there were some good soldiers among them—the slightly wounded or those suffering from any disability. Taking them altogether, Company Q resembled Mother Goose's beggars that came to town; "some in rags, some in tags, and some in velvet gowns." Company Q was always the butt of the joker.
A short time after the regiment had returned from its fruitless march down the pike, the four regiments composing the brigade under Gen. William E. Jones were ordered to break camp and move across the mountains into the enemy's country in West Virginia.