eriences" were especially identified with
that company. Being personal recollections, and to a large extent the
recital of personal incidents connected with the nine months' campaign of
the regiment in Virginia, must be my apology for the frequent use of the
personal pronoun I.
As the events of which I speak occurred at a period in our country's
history when a spade was called a spade, and among a class of men who
could not be justly accused of ambiguity of expression, my paper will be
found to contain more than one "strong, old-fashioned English word,
familiar to all who read their Bibles."
To those comrades whose war experiences were of a very different character
from my own, and into whose hands this unpretentious little volume may
fall, I trust that the recital of some of the ludicrous scenes in camp and
on the march, rather than the harrowing descriptions of sanguinary
battles, may not prove wholly unwelcome.
A. D. N.
PAWTUCKET, R. I.,
_April, 1888._
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
THE "RAW RECRUIT" ENLISTS AND GOES INTO CAMP 1
CHAPTER II.
OFF FOR THE SEAT OF WAR--THE KNAPSACKS 11
CHAPTER III.
AT MINER'S HILL--FIRST DEATH--THE "LONG ROLL" 18
CHAPTER IV.
THE CONVALESCENT CAMP--SCENES GRAVE AND GAY 27
CHAPTER V.
AT "THE FRONT"--NORFOLK AND SUFFOLK 34
CHAPTER VI.
PASTIMES IN CAMP--RELIGIOUS SERVICES 40
CHAPTER VII.
BAKED BEANS--THE DEACON'S ADVICE--STEAMED OYSTERS 46
CHAPTER VIII.
THE ELEVENTH LOSES TWO COLONELS 51
CHAPTER IX.
YORKTOWN--HOME AGAIN--MUSTERED OUT 57
CHAPTER X.
"HONOR TO WHOM HONOR IS DUE" 61
A Raw Recruit's War Experiences.
CHAPTER I.
During the winter preceding the firing upon Sumter, I was one of a group
of young fellows of about my own age who regularly assembled evenings at
the corner grocery of the village where we lived, to listen to older
persons discuss the affairs of the nation and all other matters, moral,
intellectual and social, as is the nightly custom in country groceries,
and particularly the probabilities of war between the North and the South,
which, I will say in passing, every day grew more probable. Each several
barrel-head in that grocery seemed to know its own o
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