ROD. MANNING, my present tentmate, and I got tired of lying in the mud, so we sallied over to where they were tearing down a house, about three-quarters of a mile from here, and managed to gather in a quantity of the old clapboards. With these spread on a framework of poles, we have a bunk or platform high enough to keep us out of the water when it rains, and making a very fair seat when, for instance, I want to write a letter to you. This is not the only public improvement. We have built a bough arbor over the front of our tent to give some shade from the scorching sun, and are thinking of a bough screen at the back end of the tent to keep out the wind and rain.
Our rifle pits are finished, so we will have no duty except guard duty and a short drill each day. I hope the North will send reinforcements on quickly, for I want to see our army advance again on Richmond and end the war. This is a good place to rest in for a few weeks, where we can have our supplies landed at our very door from transports.
In the retreat from Fair Oaks our company lost ten men taken prisoners. We have a pitifully short line now, compared with what it was when we left Manchester.
LXIII
Camp near Harrison’s Landing, Va.,
July 23, 1862.
BY the papers I see that a hospital is to be established in New Hampshire for the care of sick and wounded soldiers from our state. That is all very nice, but, as much as I would like to see home, I hope I will never have any use for that establishment. I have been out today to a review by Gen. McClellan and am pretty well fagged out. Now I will try to answer some of your questions. There are not many houses about here—it’s right out in the country. Such houses as there are are mostly occupied as hospitals. Those outside our lines that would interfere with the range of our guns have been torn down. Notwithstanding the ravages of war, it is a most beautiful region. The busy place now is down at the landing, where the negroes are kept busy unloading supplies from the transports. Our food, for a few days, has not been quite up to the New Hampshire standard. Our meat has been “smoked sides”—a very poor quality of bacon. I have almost forgotten how a real first-class meal does taste.
“Those curls?” Well, I came to the conclusion, yesterday, that inasmuch as I had lost my comb and didn’t know where I could get another, heroic measures were necessary. So I hunted up a camp barber and had my hair cut and my head shaved, sandpapered and varnished. I was looking at the little round picture yesterday, and a little end of black hair that straggled out between the case and the picture reminded me that you placed it there the night I told you I had enlisted. It was braided and tied just as you tied it that evening. We had but little idea then that I was to be so long away.