Clean sheets, clean water and rations enough. Well, maybe not enough but more than we are used to in camp. If this is not Heaven , it is something quite close. No one is shooting at us and that, too, is good.
Adkins and I were indeed looking forward to seeing Corporal Flynn on Monday morning. He escorted us to the train station where we met others of the regiment, also on leave and bound for Richmond. We needed no escort. We would not miss this train for anything.
At the station on the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac line, we met Steven Johnston and George Sherrer from Company B, the Campbell Rifles. There was also Ebenezer Gettys and Thomas Raterree of Company H, the Indian Land Guards. There were many others there but we six became friends and rode the same car to the capital.
En route, we made the
We left the train at the Eighth and Broad Station and made our way to the Exchange Hotel at Fourteenth and Franklin. I noticed that things were visibly different from the last time that I was here not quite a year ago. There is a certain drabness here, both in the buildings and the people. I heard a few bands playing whereas last time, it was hard to hear due to the noise. I find this quite odd as we are winning the war.
The hotel has leased half of itself to the Central Assocation for use as a Soldier's Home for us. There are beds for us with clean sheets and even pillows. Additional beds have been placed in the rooms so as to provide for more of us. We could be stacked like cordwood; we would not care a whit. We eat in the saloon at long tables. The fare is not up to the standards of a first-class establishment but we would not know what to do with something with a foreign name.
Our first meal consisted of a thin stew or perhaps a thick soup. Whatever it was, it had meat and we liked it. There was soft bread and butter. Adkins and Gettys fought over the last piece of bread with Gettys the victor. The water was cold and clear, without any blood. There was milk and buttermilk. I have never, ever liked buttermilk but I drank a quart of it and pronounced it first-rate. Privations will change a man's palate.
The six of us have said that we would stay together during our short stay here. We will see how long that lasts. I would like to go and visit the American Hotel on Twelfth and Main. Perhaps Samson, Horace and Eliza are still there. I remember them from July last when Eliza fixed up that ham I had purchased at the city market. Hancock still speaks of it from time to time.
As we have arrived in the city so late, we have had but little time for sight-seeing. The locomotive that hauled our train here moved very slowly. Even though we left early and the distance is not great, it took many hours to get here.
The Home has newspapers, paper and ink for writing, and a bath. I took one earlier. I would like to take it with me to camp. It was splendid. Only two people had used it before me. The ink that I am writing with now is from the Home.
Tomorrow will be a fine day but right now, I cannot think further than breakfast tomorrow. As long as the ink lasts, I will list every course, every bite and every gulp. We must enjoy it now for it cannot last.
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