Decatur Ala

                                                                                                            June 26^th 1864.

 

My Dear Fannie

                                    It has been over one week since I wrote you during which time I have been waiting very patiently to hear from you but have been dissapointed. but I have not got the blues although it has been nearly one month since I have heard from you. but I know that it will all come around right in the course of time.

 

            This is a very warm day and I am writing this out in our cook house which consists simply of a roof so that the air has a good chance to circulate through making it quite cool and comfortable. but occasionally the breeze dies away and the air is like a furnace. but clouds are banking up in the east and perhaps we will have a shower to cool us off. we have got our camp fixed up very comfortably we have no pleasant grove to shade us, but / we have built nice cool arbors of green brush so that our streets are well shaded and they afford a pleasant retreat from the scorching rays of the mid-days sun. we are again permanently located at Decatur for the summer I think, and are again at work on the fortifications building new ones and strengthening the old ones. we are expecting a call before long from Forest who is reported as concentrating his forces at Molton and Courtland about twenty miles from this place. he has a much larger force than we have but we can and will whip him if he will fight us at Decatur. we have the advantage of a strong position which will ballance the inequality of our forces in case Forest should cross the River and undertake to destroy our Rail Road communication we would then probably have to leave this and go in pursuit of him. we had rather fight here than to march in this warm weather but I presume Forest will consult his own convenience in preference to ours.

 

            We hear serious complaints from the north of the drouth that crops are suffering very badly and in some localities are entirely ruined. how / is it at W. if you have a famine at the north you will all have to come south and enlist. Fannie what are you going to do on the fourth of July. have you any pleasure excursion planed out. Oh! how I should like to spend the fourth with you. if there was nothing else to do we would get up a party or go by ourselves over to White Lake and have a Picnic and a sail. would’nt it be pleasant. I think we could enjoy ourselves hugely. it would be such a delightful change from the busy though monotonous camp life which we are compeled to lead here. we have no society whatever except ourselves so it is not so great a wonder that we get to be so rough and uncouth. we have none of womans gentle influence exerted over us to keep us within bounds. I expect Fannie you will be ashamed of me and be obliged to give me a regular course of training to get me over my old soldier habits but I will be an atentive pupil if you will have patience with me. but Fannie dear I must now close for my cook is waiting for the table on which I am writing so good by please write soon & accept much love from your

            my regards to all your people                         Affectionate

                                                                                                            Frank

 

P. S We have just rec^d orders to march with two days rations in which direction I dont know

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