Читать книгу A Minor War History Compiled from a Soldier Boy's Letters to "the Girl I Left Behind Me": 1861-1864 - Martin A. Haynes - Страница 21

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Camp Sullivan, Washington, D. C., August 5, 1861.

THE heat today is something awful. We are all just about dead from it—lying about camp and sweltering. I received your letter of the 30th and will answer your questions in turn.

Charlie Farnam is in our regiment as a drummer.

All the boys you specially inquired after are well. Hen. Pillsbury inquires often where “the woman” is and how she is getting along.

As to the talk that we are going to be beaten in this war, that is the veriest bosh. The next time we march towards Richmond we will have force enough to crush our way. We were not beaten this time in the fighting, but by an unfortunate combination of adverse circumstances. Had Johnston’s division been held back by Patterson, as it was expected it would be, we should have beaten them anyway. And even with that reinforcement I am not sure we would not have whipped them in the end, but for that unaccountable panic communicated to two or three broken regiments by teamsters who had driven their teams into places where they were not wanted, and who took the order to change positions as a signal for retreat. Then everything went to pieces before anybody really knew what had happened.

My tentmates Holt and Morse were both awfully nice boys. Holt was the first man killed in the regiment. He was not with the company, but with the corps of pioneers, a detachment of axe-men, made up of details from the various companies. He was killed very early in the action, while crouching in a ditch, by a piece of shell which struck him in the shoulders. Morse was killed late in the day. The regiment was crossing from the slope where it had been fighting over to the opposite hill. It was halted in the valley, while Gen. Burnside rode up the hill a little piece and took an observation. We were under very sharp fire from a battery further up. I heard a shot from it come roaring down the slope, ending in a “thud” which told it had got a victim down the line. Looking back, I saw a prostrate form sprawled in the dust of the road, with Johnny Ogden bending over it. “Who is it, Johnny?” I called back. “Hen. Morse,” he answered me.

We expect to change our position before long—are hoping to spend a few of these hot weeks at Fort McHenry, in Baltimore, or at Fortress Monroe. I don’t know where the idea started from, but it would be fine.

I hear from Manchester often. Roger Woodbury, George Dakin, Ruthven Houghton and Frank Morrill have enlisted into the Third Regiment. How I wish that crowd was in this company!

Some of our officers are now in New Hampshire after recruits to fill the gaps in the Second Regiment.