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Leander Stillwell
Published by Good Press, 2019
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The only thing recalled now that was sort of disagreeable at Camp Carrollton was the utter absence of privacy. Even when off duty, one couldn't get away by himself, and sit down in peace and quiet anywhere. And as for slipping off into some corner and trying to read, alone, a book or paper, the thing was impossible. To use a modern expression, there was always "something doing." Many a time after supper, on very cold nights, when the boys would all be in the barracks, singing or cutting up, I would sneak out and walk around under the big trees, with the snow crackling under my feet, for no other purpose whatever than just to be alone a while. But that condition of things changed for the better after we got down South, and were no longer cooped up in a forty acre lot.
General Grant gained his great victory at Fort Donelson on February 16, 1862, and the news reached us a few days later. The boys talked about it with feelings of mingled exultation—and mortification. Exultation, of course, over the "glorious victory," but mortification in regard to its effects and consequences on our future military career. We all thought, from the officers down, that now the war would end, that we would see no actual service, and never fire a shot. That we would be discharged, and go home just little "trundle-bed soldiers," and have to sit around and hear other sure-enough warriors tell the stories of actual war and fighting. If we only had known, we were borrowing unnecessary trouble—as we found out later.
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