"...I Should be Dead."

Wednesday, November 12, 1862, Winder Hospital, Richmond

A great deal of the last month is unknown to me. I can write here what I can remember but I cannot be sure that it is correct. 

I think that I remember marching through Martinsburg with the regiment and heading towards Bunker Hill, not too far from Winchester. This could have been early in October or it could have been the week just passed. One afternoon, while in camp, sometime after dinner, I felt uneasy in the bowels and head and turned in early. When I awoke next, I was in a hospital bed in Richmond and felt like death would be welcome.

From what I have been told, I should be dead. I have had a fever that rendered me insensible for some weeks. One of the nurses here said that he was forced to change my bedding quite often due to my profuse sweating. When he said that, I felt pitiful thinking that for some weeks I was lying in a bed above the ground, out of the weather with clean linens and could not remember any of it and therefore could not enjoy any of it. O the cruelty of it all.

My uniform has been exchanged for a simple dressing gown of sorts. As the gown is quite thin, it is good that my hospital bed is not far from the stove. Whenever I should pass by the stove, I toss in a chunk of wood. The weather is turning and the warm days of summer are but a memory.

I would suppose that my diary is still back in camp. The hospital steward was kind enough to allow me some of his foolscap and a pencil. This will all have to be re-written again into my diary whenever I return to camp. 

There is not much to keep a body busy here but I do not mind that as I would prefer to sleep. I do sleep a great deal. Since this is the capital there are newspapers to read and there is a small library here. Somewhere in this hospital, one of the patients has a fiddle and plays it. I have never seen him but I have heard him. He is lucky that he plays well for if he did not I think that several of us would kill him.

The hospital fare here is not extravagant but is tolerable and at least filling. This morning we were served a rasher of bacon and one egg each. There was real coffee and some tea as well as sugar. The best thing was the fresh bread. None of us will grow fat on this fare but none will starve, either. I wonder how the boys are faring back at camp. Has anything happene