It continues warm and pleasant. All is quiet. I went up town
to the division quartermaster to buy provisions for the officers, the captain
giving me the money with the order to purchase ten days’ provisions. When I
returned the captain noticed among the items of the bill “20 lbs. codfish,” and
exclaimed, “Why, Alexander, what in thunder are you going to do with salty
codfish? You have enough to do the whole company, and there are but three of us
!”2
__________
2 There was some suspicion that the codfish
deal was some April Fool business, but I declare that it was all done in dead
earnest. But I began to figure that it was a pretty large ration of codfish for
ten days and the matter having been noised about, I was not very careful to
lock the codfish in the mess chest. The boys soon found out where they could
find codfish after night, and at the end of a week it had all disappeared. I
was thankful. — A. G. D.
Source: Alexander G. Downing, Edited by Olynthus B.,
Clark, Downing’s Civil War Diary, p. 107
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