Click here for this soldier’s biography:
https://micivilwar.com/authors/louks-william-a/
Regiment: 56th Ohio Infantry
Battles Mentioned:
Historical Figures:
New Orleans, La
March the 27th, 1865
Dearest Mary,
My health is good this evening and I hope that yours is also. I can only hope so as it will
be so long before I can hear from you. This is the sixth letter that I have wrote you and I
expect that I will write two or three more before your letters will get here. It will almost
seem an age, Dear May, before I can get one of your letters which I so much covet but I
will try and wait with patience till the slow mails bring them and try to write at least once
a week to you though I expect that they will not be very interesting to you as we have
the same old routine of duty each day with guard every third day and there is nothing to
be seen here in the city that would interest you to tell you of so you must not think that.
I am shipping my letters if I do sometimes write small ones and not of any particular
interest besides I have to write with almost a dozen fellows in the same room. There is
two playing cards and two playing checkers with plenty of noise for any four men but I
am tolerable used to that so it does not put me out so much now but I do think, Dear
May, sometimes that I must have been crazy when I reenlisted and chose to have them
for my company instead of you and a comfortable home where I might have been
blessed by your presence and sweet smiles instead of oaths every few minutes from
some fellows playing cards but I have made the bad choice and it cannot be unmade
but by staying the time out but should I be so fortunate as to serve to the end of this
time I do not think that I will go crazy again. There is one thing certain, I have got to hate
the sight of a commissioned officer and I would feel like hitting him should he mention a
reenlistment again to me and I know that there is a good many of the other boys here
that are like me in that respect at least that old Colonel had reduced me to rank soon
after he came into command of the regiment without charging me with anything and
when I got back he was ashamed to tell me of it. When I came back I guess I could
make him give it back to me again but he would make me act the tyrant over the boys
by his orders or he would put in charges of disobedience of orders against me so he
would get me where he wants me anyhow and as he gave my place to my old comrade,
I intend not to say anything about it for should I get it I would put my comrade out and
while I stay a private I stand a better chance as they cannot have such a good chance
to use their malice as when they can order me in charge of a squad of men. So I guess
to take it in the whole, they have made a mistake in reducing me for they cannot make
me do a heap of disagreeable duty that they would otherwise compel me to do but I
have the stand of them now for I can refuse to be promoted to a corporal now if they
were to want to put me in for such use.
Well Dear May, I have went off again on a long detail of these officers, well if you will
forgive me for it. I will not bring them to your notice very often again for I know if I was
away from them I never would want to hear of them again.
Well May, I must close my letter and turn of the gas so the boys that are on guard will
get to sleep. I am on guard tomorrow and must sleep too as I will have to be up most of
the night while on guard. So Goodbye Dearest May for this time.
Yours truly with Love, Will
