Camp in the field three miles from                

Sharpsburg Maryland Sept 27. 1862 

 

Friend Jacob.                         

I received your long looked for and welcomed letter. Oh you cannot imagine how much good it did me to hear from you once more and right glad was I to learn that you were doing so well that death had not entered your family during the long period which we remained in ignorance of each others situation or whereabouts. I am very sorry that you have not had an opportunity of going to school and improving your mind which was regarded by every one when we were schoolmates together as being superior to all your contemporaries. I do not wish to flatter you or to make you vain by telling you any such thing. But there is time enough yet and I advise you to go on and complete your education so soon as you are so situated and in such circumstances as will admit of it. I enlisted some six weeks ago and our Regiment was quartered in Camp Puleston near Washington about a week and during that time we did not receive a single battalion drill nor have we yet. We left camp on the seventh of this month and have been marching almost constantly ever since. Our Regt is the 137^th Penn^a / and is attached to Hancocks Brigade Smiths Division Franklins Corps. Our Brigade was in the late great battle at Sharpsburg but our Regiment was back some three miles guarding the train. We arrived on the battle field a week ago yesterday and the Regt worked all day Saturday and Sunday burying the dead. The scene was revolting to the extreme. The dead in the field where we worked were piled up by the hundreds all over the field, some with their heads shot entirely off and some with their heads partly off. The scene beggars description. They had lain there three or four days and so sultry had been the atmosphere that decomposition had been making rapid progress. All countenances had swollen beyond point of possible recognition. Features had become one dark mass of putridity and corruption, forms once active vigorous and manly were distended like bladders. some of their heads even dropped off while our men were carrying them to throw them in the pits dug for them. I am the regimental Clerk with the rank of private and have to do considerable writing. Camp life and marching agrees with me very well and I think it will be a good thing for me if I live through it. When you write to Fitch tell him where I am and that I would like to have him write to me or if I knew his address I would write to him. But I have written about all that I can of at present.

           

Give my love to your folks.

                                                                                   

Yours with much respect

F. P. Longstreet 

 

Address.         

Francis P Longstreet

137^th Regt P.V.

Washington D.C.

In care of Co^l H. M. Bossert.

SOURCES