Showing posts with label Snakes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Snakes. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 6, 2020

Captain Charles Wright Wills: November 29, 1864

Ten miles south of Sevastopol, 
November 29, 1864. 

All day in an awful pine forest, hardly broken by fence or clearing. I never saw such a lonesome place. Not a bird, not a sign of animal life, but the shrill notes of the tree frog. Not a twig of undergrowth, and no vegetable life but just grass and pitch pine. The country is very level and a sand bed. The pine trees are so thick on the ground that in some places we passed to-day the sight was walled in by pine trunks within 600 yards for nearly the whole circle. Just at dusk we passed a small farm, where I saw growing, for the first time, the West India sugar cane. One of the boys killed the prettiest snake I ever saw. It was red, yellow and black. Our hospital steward put it in liquor. We made about 11 miles to-day. 

SOURCE: Charles Wright Wills, Army Life of an Illinois Soldier, p. 328

Thursday, July 12, 2018

Captain Charles Wright Wills: May 7, 1864, 12 p.m.

Two miles south of the Gordon's Mills crossing of the Chickamauga,
May 7, 1864, 12 m.

We started at 8 this morning and made this by 11. We are now waiting for two or more divisions of the 16th Corps to file into the road ahead of us. I think they are coming from Ringold. A circular of McPherson's was read to us this morning before starting, telling us we were about to engage the enemy and giving us some advice about charging, meeting charges, shooting low, and telling us not to quit out lines to carry back wounded, etc., and intimating that he expected our corps to occupy a very warm place in the fight, and to sustain the fighting reputation of the troops of the department of the Tennessee.

The men talk about hoping that the divisions now going ahead will finish the fighting before we get up, but I honestly believe they'd all rather get into a battle than not. It is fun to hear these veterans talk. I guess that about two-thirds of them got married when they were home. Believe it will do much toward steadying them down when they return to their homes. They almost all say that they had furlough enough and were ready to start back when their 30 days were up.

It is hot as the deuce; two of our men were sun struck at Lookout Mountain on the 3rd.

Dust is becoming very troublesome. I am marching in a badly-fitting pair of boots, and one of my feet is badly strained across the instep, pains me a good deal when resting. That and my sprained wrist make me almost a subject for the Invalid Corps, but I intend to carry them both as far as Atlanta, after our “Erring Brethren,” if I have no further bad luck. One of my men, when he rolled up his blanket this morning, found he had laid on a snake, and killed him—poor snake!

SOURCE: Charles Wright Wills, Army Life of an Illinois Soldier, p. 235-6

Saturday, March 17, 2018

Captain Charles Wright Wills: October 4, 1863

October 4, 1863.

Have been over to Worthington's again to-day. Sam got out his hounds and started a deer for us. We stationed ourselves in the runway, but although the deer came near us two or three times in his circling, the dogs didn't push him hard enough to make him break for distant cover. The major killed a very large snake and some of the boys got a shot at an alligator. We then left the bayou and went out to old River Lake, where we got some splendid shooting. I killed a water turkey at 500 yards, shooting into a flock. Our guns, the Henry rifle, threw bullets full a mile and one-half. I found that I could do tolerably close shooting, something I never suspicioned before. A neighbor told me that old Worthington sold the mother of his children, and with her five other picaninnies.

SOURCE: Charles Wright Wills, Army Life of an Illinois Soldier, p. 196