From The Regimental Flag: Stolen
part of a series from the regimental newspaper of the 2nd Delaware Infantry
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From The Regimental Flag (Vol. 4), February 20, 1862, pg. 3
STOLEN.
Some person with a thieving propensity entered the quarters of the Non-commissioned Staff, and abstracted there from, without permission of the owner a colored flannel shirt. The thief, I can’t call him a man, who did the low piece of business should be laid in limbo and be compelled to dine on Kent’s jumbles and salt junk during the remainder of his enlistment, and then be drummed out of service to the tune of “old rogue’s March,” as none other would be more suitable.
Description: — Gray flannel, pleated bosom, with four buttons edged with blue on the bosom.
Yours, Victim.
Thanks for gleaning this item and posting it! This kind of vocabulary in the regiment’s news article really brings a sense of the era.
Are we sure Mark Twain didn’t write that letter? It feels timeless; in fact I wouldn’t be surprised to find the same kind of wit in Caesar’s armies, or the crusaders marching on Jerusalem.
It sounds like a wry human view inside daily military life, in almost any age.
Okay, now I need to know what “Kent’s jumbles and salt junk” is. Obviously, something that is not edible