Cincinnati Ohio Sept 1^st 1862

 

Dear Sister Celia;

                                    I dont know whether you or Harriet is entitled to the first letter from me but I will write to you this time & to Harriet next. I am now in Cincinnati being absent from Camp Dennison on a short furlough. I have bought a quantity of this paper which is designed for foreign correspondence & will carry it with envelops & postage stamps in my knapsack so that I can write to you occasionally. Have been to Camp Dennison two weeks. Received your letter while there. Like the service very much we will probably march this week or next as our regiment is full & mustered into Service. We have excellent Company officers though our colonel in my opinion dont know / much about his business. But our Lieut Colonel has been in Service at Pittsburgh landing & is a competent officer. I have just bought me a pair of Spectacles in which I can see admirably. Every thing looks so different from what it did when I had none. I shant use them any except when I wish to look at a distance. I was appointed Sargeant in our Company but dont think I shall retain the office. It is harder than a private and then the pay is but little more & the responsibility much greater. I acted as Sargeant of the guard at Camp one night. We have a spendid company I have stood guard twice. They are detailed in the morning for the next twenty four hours, are divided into three reliefs each of which stands guard for two hours & then the next is called on so that it is two hours on & 4 off through the twenty / four hours at the end of which a new lot of men are detailed for the next day. While a man is on guard he has to walk his beat which is a path three or four rods in length & allow no man to pass it. When his relief is off he can sleep on the ground ready to be called up by the corporal to go on at the next time. Rain makes no difference. I have tried sleeping on the ground at night with a stone for my pillow & despite it was a little chilly towards morning I stood it better than I expected. If you write within a week or so you can address A M Weston Col J R Taylors 50^th Ohio Regiment O.V.I. Care of Capt Hendricks Camp Dennison Ohio. If we change camp the main part of the address will / still be the same. We live on hard crackers the fattest kind of pork (not a mouthful of which I have yet tasted) beef steak coffee without milk, soft bread, not butter, beans rice & when the men choose to steal it roasting ears from the fields. I dont consider it much of a crime for our boys when they can get out of the lines to bring in a few ears of corn for their dinner. We get occasionally some poor apples in the same We can buy pies at 5 cts a piece small ones which are brought into the lines for sale also peaches &c. But a soldier at 13 dollars a month can afford but few of these luxuries. You must not infer from the extensive bill of fare tht I have named that we can have all these at once. Generally a cup of coffee & a hard cracker is all that we get for breakfast & the same for supper. We sleep in bunks of hard board with each of us a blanket. Still I enjoy myself remarkably write soon I expect to be in a fight in Kentucky within the next three weeks. Have you heard from Thomas. Your brother A M Weston

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