An Artilleryman’s Diary–Jenkin Lloyd Jones

Huntsville, Tuesday, June 21. Rained all day. Everybody is quiet but busy, preparing for the morrow, packing knapsacks, writing letters, etc. Upwards of one hundred fifty letters left the Battery to-day. Enoch Johnson died at 10 A. M. This young man leaves a wife and child to mourn his loss, whom but a few months ago he left in the prime of life to do service for his country. Alas! they will see his manly form no more in this world. His disease was congestive chills and typhoid fever. Was one of the detachment that late in the evening followed the corpse to the grave. Silently, without a word of prayer, we buried him in a rude coffin, and without a thought hardly, hastened back to camp to prepare for the morrow. It is now dark and I go to an early rest in my homelike bunk for the last time.