WRA Letter #7 - June 15, 1862

#17 WRA VII to FLA

Tupeloe [sic]Mifs June the 15th 1862

Dear Fannie
I again attempt to write to you though I have nothing to write but the same old tune - that I am still sick & don't know when I will get well - but think that if I could go home on thirty days furlough where I could get vegetables to eat and free stone water to drink I would get as fat as a pig. I have not seen a well day since I left home - the measles look like they will never get out of my system and I have the worst kind of diarheah all the time. A few nights ago I staid all night at a very nice house in company with several others and in the night I dreamed I had a chamber [pot] and got up off of my pallet and cut loose on the gentleman's fine carpet. You may guefs that I got some water & cleaned it up before I slept any more. I have the piles very bad which I am afraid will render me me [sic] unfit for the cavalry service, if I ever get over my present sicknefs I am#now staying at a private house nine miles from Tupeloe, have been staying here three or four days, will go back to camp in the morning as my money is out - staying in the country with my horse costs me about a dollar a day which you know counts pretty fast. I have borrowed about all the money I could in camp, sold apart of my clothing and my pocket knife to get money to defray my expenses -but now I am out of money out of any thing to sell and all of our company is about out of money, so I recon I will have to go back to camp and lie there and die, as we have not got a single tent. and have to sleep in the open air. I recon you would like to know where Tupeloe is, well it is fifty miles south of Corinth on the Mobile & Ohio RR and is the place that our army is stationed at at [sic] present. I don't know whether the army will make a permanent stand here or not, they are digging wells and buil[d]ing crop ways and bridges as though they were going to make a stand - but I don't think there is enough water here for the army and it is the meanest kind of lime water - I think there is a great deal of sicknefs in this division of the army and I don't think a sick soldier is cared as much for here as the people in our country care for a good dog. perhaps you would like to know what we get to eat here in the army. we generally draw fat bacon flour plenty molasses Rice and sometimes corn peas and sugar and coffee. I feel now like I never will want to see any more bacon or flour bread. Fannie I understood that you carried four middlings of meat up to your Pappa's for Phelix which would bring much more money than Phelix if put up and sold to these soldiers at the highest Bidder. I think it would be a profitable day's work to move Phelix and the four sides of bacon back home and risk Phelix getting burned, I don't know what bacon is worth there but I have seen plenty of it sell here at, 50 cts per lb and it would bring a dollar if it was asked. chickens bring a dollar a piece & butter a dollar per lb, and butter milk one dollar per qt here and in ten days it will be worth double or thrible [sic] as much. I have a splendid appetite and think if I could get the diarheah stopped I would get stout in a short time. I don't suppose I will weigh more that 125 lbs ~ It is very dry disagreeable weather here at present but corn looks fine. Please write soon as I havn't recd but one letter from you since I left home - direct your letter to me Col Brewer's Reg 2ond Ala & Mifs Cavalry, Capt Pinkards Co.
Wm R Anderson