Tuesday, May 19, 2020

Captain Charles Wright Wills: October 14, 1864

Three miles southwest of Adairsville, October 14th.

We marched at sunset last evening and halted not until 3 this a. m. Marched miserably slow the first five miles through a deep gorge, but about 1 o'clock got straightened out on the Rome and Calhoun road, a good one, and then got along nicely. In the fighting at Rome yesterday, our folks whipped them and took some artillery. We got to bed at 3:15, and reveille sounded at 5 and we marched at 6:30. Not much sleep after marching 20 miles, was it. We had no crackers this morning, and before I got up my imagination was reveling in the prospect of a breakfast on parched corn, but at the festive board the cook surprised us with a mess of pancakes. They looked like plates cut out of a rubber blanket, and tasted accordingly. One member of the mess said they just came up to his ideal of a poet's dream. Another, that they only lacked one thing, and that was the stamp, “Goodyear's Patent.” The Surgeon advised us to use them sparingly, for, said he, “If they mass against any part of your interior lines the consequences will be dire.” But we were hard up for breadstuffs, and closed with the dreadful stuff manfully. Twelve m.—Have stopped for dinner.

The Rebel army was, or part of it, at Resaca yesterday, about nine miles from here.

SOURCE: Charles Wright Wills, Army Life of an Illinois Soldier, p. 310-1

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