We lay at the wharf all night, loading the quartermaster’s
supplies. At 8 a. m. we left St. Louis for Cairo, Illinois. Our entire regiment
is on the one boat, a side-wheeler. Company E is quartered on the hurricane
deck, and a cold wind blowing makes it rather disagreeable for us. We lay up
for the night one hundred miles below St. Louis. We have big times getting our
rations cooked, for there is but one place to get boiling water to make coffee,
and only one place at the fire where we can broil our bacon. Each man slices
his bacon, puts it on the ramrod, and holds it close to the fire under the
boilers. We all have to take our turn, and since there are eight hundred men, there
is some one at the fire all day and part of the night. The captain of the boat
declared that we were “the d-----st set of men to eat” that he had ever seen in
his life.
Source: Alexander G. Downing, Edited by Olynthus B.,
Clark, Downing’s Civil War Diary, p. 36
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