Oak Park, Ill., June 14, 1915.
FORT HENRY
CHAPTER I.
“Say, Will, did you see that one as it crossed the line just now?”
“No, Jim; how can a feller see anything this dark night?”
“Well, he ran right by me, and I think he was as big as our dog, Rover, at home. Isn’t it a beastly shame that orders are so strict about shooting while on guard? I’d like to have shot that fellow for sure.”
“Never mind, Jim; you’ll have enough of shooting before this war is over, I’m thinking, for I feel it in my bones that Gen. Grant is getting ready to start something in the way of fighting, for I’ve seen him two or three times, and he looks to me as though he was a fighter.”
“Well, old scout, anything but this kind of soldiering.”
The conversation was between two young soldier boys of Company A, 45th Illinois Volunteers, while on guard duty around camp in the month of January, 1862, at Cairo, Illinois, on one of the darkest and rainiest nights they ever saw. The “It” was a calf that in crossing the path had startled Jim so much he was tempted to shoot it. As the two neighbor boys, just from the farm in Northern Illinois, trudged back and forth on their posts through the deepest and blackest mud they had ever seen, they stopped at the end of their “beat” as they met, and talked for a few moments of home and the loved ones left behind; of camp and its arduous duties, of drilling and guard duty, and then of what would be the next move. The American Volunteers always kept up a “think” or two in their heads as to what would and should be done in fighting the battles for the Union.
“Will, I hope we won’t have to stay here long.”