Rainy Post-Shiloh Days

As I sit in cooped up in my office on this dreary April day, I am reminded that 147 years ago tens of thousands of men were doing precisely the same. After the excitement of battle had faded, the survivors were given ample time to reflect on their experiences as movement ground to a halt. Maj. Ben Buckner of the 20th KY (U.S.) felt much the same as he wrote home to Helen.

Although I have written you two letters in the last days, I dont know how I can better spend an hour or so this gloomy rainy miserable evening than by writing to you again, feeling assured that you will receive any thing I may write with pleasure, however uninteresting it might be to others; and as you are so very good about writing as indeed you are about every thing else, I would have no excuse for not having written should by time during the next week be so occupied as to make it impossible to do so. But dearest though I may write you never so long a letter you must not expect any thing of interest. The battle with all its horror as well as points of interest you have learned all about long since, and we have no incident in camp worth relating. We are stuck fast in the mud, and as it rains here every day I dont know when we will move, as it would now be utterly impossible to drag our artillery over these horrid roads. The rebels are somewhere, I dont know where, though if they were only five miles distant I would not know it as the movements of the rebels and indeed of our own army are kept profound secrets from both officers and men. ...

You dont know how very much I want to see you. Do you know that the day of the battle, I thought of you again and again , that during the terrible scene that I thought not of mother & father or self only you. God bless you darling you are so good, true, and noble. ... Write me a long letter dear Helen, tell me every thing about you. ...

As ever yours

B.