March 2, Evening.
John Quincy (Co. G)
came and asked me today if I would “send up North” for a pair of spectacles for
him, “for common eyes of 60.” The old man said he “could not live long enough
to make much account of them,” but that he “could read right smart places in
the Testament,” and since he has lost his spectacles he missed it. This is the
same soldier who told his congregation on the Ben Deford, after our St. Mary's
trip, that he saw the Colonel with his shoulder at the wheel of the big gun in
the midst of the firing, and that “when de shell went out it was de scream ob
de great Jehovah to de rebels.” What made this statement the more interesting
to me was the fact that I was standing in the background with the Colonel at
the time, and John Quincy did not know of our presence.
We are now weeding
our regiment a little, and today I have examined about a hundred and discharged
thirty for disability. I find one poor fellow whose mind is very torpid, though
he is not idiotic. A companion of his told me that he had been overworked in the
Georgia rice swamps and that “he be chilly minded, not brave and expeditious
like me.” I believe I have somewhere written that our men were not subjected to
examination by a surgeon before enlisting, hence this disagreeable business of
discharging now. It is much easier to keep men out of a regiment than to get
them out when once in.
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