PREAMBLE
INgathering material for a history of the Second Regiment, one of my sources of information was a big bundle of letters, even then yellowing with age—my letters, covering a period of over three years, written to “The girl I left behind me.” These—with the elimination of such strictly personal matters as concerned only the two of us—were carefully copied, and the letters then given to the flames. Thirty years later, breaking the seals of that bundle of manuscript, I read with indescribable interest my own story of more than half a century ago. And the whim came upon me to put those scraps of war history into type and print a few copies, especially for members of the family. I can see an opening for only one regret. It will probably destroy an illusion of those four grandchildren—Marjorie and Warren, Martin and Eugene—as to their grandfather’s relative importance in the war, and while Grant and Sherman will be moved up one notch on the roll of those who put down the Great Rebellion, I will, very likely, have to be content with third place.
There is lots of history here—minor history, to be sure—and while there is a sequence of events, it is not a connected story, nor even complete. A series of letters rarely is. They do not deal, like Sherman’s letters, in the grand strategy of campaigns, but they do give an idea of what the men in the ranks were talking and thinking and doing. Their interest lies almost entirely in the fact that they deal with the trivialities of army life. Here is recorded the small talk of the camp, and many incidents that are too trivial for big history, but are really interesting and worth saving. I have preserved the personality of some of those royal old comrades of mine, who but for these letters would be remembered only through the cold lines of the official record. In these sketches—“right off the bat,” as it were—they seem to live again, and one can get a very fair idea of what manner of men they were. It is sometimes with moistened eyes that I catch the step with them again in these pages and in memory live over those stirring days when comradeship was so close and meant so much.
I feel lonesome when I realize that I am almost the last survivor of those who live and move in the following pages. Not one member of the old “Abbott Guard”—a Manchester company and largely composed of Manchester men—now remains as a living resident of that city, and the survivors, scattered far and wide, can be counted upon the fingers of one hand. As often happened in the old army days, I am once more a straggler, dusty, footsore and weary. But I know that before long I will swing around the bend in the road and come upon the whole precious bunch in bivouac. There will be Rod. Manning and George Slade, Hen. Everett and Bill Ramsdell, “Heenan” and “Gunny,” old Dan. Desmond—a hundred of the rarest aggregation that ever touched elbows in a common cause. And with the old familiar whoop they will greet the belated straggler and give him a place at their campfire.
M. A. H.
Lakeport, New Hampshire, October, 1916.
** * ** * * * ** * * * * * ** * * * ** * **