Sunday morning.
Nothing happened during the night. We bought a good breakfast of a family who
make a business of feeding the soldiers that come here, for I was told there is
a detail here every day. I wish it might be us every time. As soon as the new
guard arrives we are to go back to camp and camp fare again.
2 p. m. In camp
again. It seems hotter and dirtier than ever after our day in the country.
Before we left Catonsville we filled our haversacks with great luscious
peaches. Those that ripen on the tree the people cannot sell, so they gave us
all that would fall with a gentle shake of the tree. How I wished I could empty
my haversack in your lap, mother. On the way to camp we met a drove of mules,
said to be 400 of them, loose, and being driven like cattle. They were afraid
of us and all got in a close bunch, and the 400 pairs of ears all flapping
together made a curious sight. We were told they came from Kentucky and are for
use in the army. They were all bays, with a dark stripe along the back and
across the shoulders, looking like a cross laid on their backs. It hasn't
seemed much like Sunday. But Sunday doesn't count for much in the army. Many of
our hardest days have been Sundays. But I am sleepy, having been awake all last
night. It is surprising how little sleep we get along with. I, who have been
such a sleepy-head all my life, get only a few hours' sleep any night, and many
nights none at all. I suppose we will sometime get accustomed to the noise and
confusion, that so far has had no end, night or day.
SOURCE:
Lawrence Van Alstyne, Diary of an Enlisted Man, p. 33-4
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