Potomac Bridge, Virginia
November 28, 1862
Here we are back with the Brigade at last. I hope you yesterday remembered us at home in your cups, for not a drop to drink, save water, had we, and our eating was of the toughest and slimmest. Here we are though, through mud and mire and rain, up with the army at last. A winter campaign here, by the way, is just impossible, no more and no less, and you who sit so snugly at home by the fire and round the hearth, and discuss our laziness in not pressing on, may as well dry up. We will allow everything to please you, waste of life, loss of labor, extreme exposure without tents, existence in a foodless country and all you will, and yet any movement is just simply impossible on account of mud. Horses can’t walk, artillery can’t be hauled, and ammunition can’t be carried through this country after this season. Of course, we don’t expect to get any forage, rations or tents through, but it is simply impossible to go ahead and carry the arms and ammunition to enable us to fight, though we should consent to starve and freeze cheerfully. So I look on it after the experience of a few days’ march. I may be wrong and hope I am. But Lord! how it vexes and amuses me to think how easy it is, after a full dinner, to sip your wine in the gas light, and look severely into a fine fire across the table, and criticise and find fault with us poor devils, at that very time preparing to lie down before our fires, mud to the middle, wet through, after a fine meal of hard bread and water, and with nothing between us and the sky but November clouds. I don’t complain of these little incidents of our life myself, and only I do wish they found less fault at home….
