[73]
Camp Near Atlanta Ga.
Wednesday morning Aug 17th 1864
Dear & ever beloved Wife
I take this opportunity to answer your letters one dated July 16th and one of July 31st they were dated two weeks apart if you wrote one betwen them I have not received it. I was glad to get your letters and to hear that you were all well and to hear that Edgar & Frank were good boys at the time you wrote your last: your letters found me well and I am still the same to day & hope this will find you and the children well: you did not say any thing about Georgie so I dont know as she is one of the family now. I have not received but one letter from her since she went to Merriden I guess she has forgot that she has got a Father in the army that feels an interest in her welfare and that would like to hear from her every week but insted of that I have had one letter in three months. we are not right in front of the rebs our lines are but a short ways apart their bullets are whistleing into our camp constantly they are whizing over and past my head now all of the time whilst I am writing this letter. It is a very dangerous place here whare we are now our boys in this Regt are getting picked off almost every day we have lost our orderly serg,t since I wrote to you before he was killed on the fifth of August he was in his tent packing his knapsack the rebs charged on our pickets and the first volly that they fired one of the stray balls struck him in his forehead near the edge of his hair over the left eye and passed through his brain and lodged in his neck on the right side next to the skin killing him instantly, day before yesterday there was one killed and two wounded in our regt. yesterday there was one wounded how many or howes turn it will be to day we can not tell; no one knows when he is safe in this place fore he is liable to be struck down any moment. takeing it all round now we are haveing pretty hard times I can tell you the last time I was on picket we advanced our pcket line in the night and it was rather of a disagreeable job for we did not know the lay of the land nor what we should meet in advancing but I tell you what I expected to meet that was a volly of rebbel bullets long before we arrived whare we wished to go to, our orders were to go as still as we could and not fire unles they opened on us then we was to yell and cheer and rush onto them and drive them back till we gained the point that we wished to which was a high hill in front of us but we gained our point without any accident we crept to within six rods of some of the rebs then we stoped and dug pits and by day light we had some good skirmish pits and we still occupy them Horatio has had a very bad boil on his knee he has been laid up with it about two weeks but it is getting better now I received the dollar that you sent I thank you for it but you nead not send any more unles I send for it From your afectionate Husband A.C. Smith
PS Another man in our company has just been hit with a bullet on the foot but did not hit so as to go through it hit on the side of his foot made it black and blue that is plenty near I think My love to you and the children
Copyright © 2009 Bruce E. Leandro. All rights reserved.