Camp Near Falmouth Va.

April 19^th 1863.

                                   

Dear Sister

                                                I received your letter with two stamped envelopes last Thursday night with much pleasure and I shall have to hurry up my cakes now a little to get this written in time to send off in tonights mail.

 

            I have been reading most all the time today "American Union" and "Flag", so the time has passed away pretty fast. Col Rogers has got back here again not much improved in health to all appearances. he took us out on battalion drill the other day looking like the very picture of death. his face looks like that of a corpse. I have got Eliza's picture now.                                                                                                                           

Lowell. 

 

Col Read inspected the left of the line this morning with the Major. Col Rogers took the right. The regiment is looking pretty well now. this morning in particular everyone was looking his best, shoes brushed and blacked, also equipments, brasses brushed up so they looked like gold, and muskets looking like silver as they flashed in the rays of the sun. The officers are all on good terms and are a great deal better satisfied than they were four months ago. We are having a pleasant snap now. the sun seems really hot and it feels good to get into the shade. We have had a touch of the marching fever the last week but it seems to have passed away now. perhaps the Charleston defeat had something to do with it. / We had got to carry eight days rations of crackers, five of them in our knapsacks. This seemed like light marching orders with a vengeance. I suppose you have heard that Hooker was not going to have the army encumbered with too much or unnecessary baggage. Well I shouldnt think he was. The teams were going to carry any bundles we might want them to, such as tents, clothing &c. But what load they take off in this way they put on again double in the shape of provisions. They gave out the rations to us Thursday to pack in our knapsacks and the next day took them all away again. The officers tents were all taken away from them (large winter tents) and they had to come down to the shelter tents just like the privates. They are telling around here today the mails are not allowed to go further North than Washington that is for the present. /

 

I am sorry you were so "mad" about my letter, or me, but I trust you may have got partly over it by this time. You want to know what Corps I am in It is the sixth. Gen. Sedgewick Newtons Division, Devens Brigade. we wear a blue cross on our caps to distinguish us from other corps. The others all have nothing so as to be known. We have heard about the Spring you speak of. It is somewhere in this neighborhood, an old farmer that owns the land where we are that it is true about it drying up &c. I have meant to ask him a good while ago but I never think of it when I see him. Who has Pa made a trade with Is it that railroad Company. I should like to draw the stuff away but I have got something else to draw over this great State of Virginia besides wood. I shall have to depend on home for envelopes from this out I have got a good supply of poor paper from the sutler.

                                                                                               

L.C.Cook

 

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We had a wet time before we got off picket Wednesday. It began raining about midnight Tuesday as we lay on the ground rolled up in our blankets.

 

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I guess we go to bed rather earlier than you. We are in bed every night when not on duty at eight oclock: up in the morning at six.

SOURCES