Chapter 41
CLOTHING: ITS RAPID DETERIORATION, AND DEVICES TO REPLENISH IT--DESPERATE EFFORTS TO COVER NAKEDNESS--"LITTLE RED CAP" AND HIS LETTER. Clothing had now become an object of real solicitude to us older prisoners. The veterans of our crowd--the surviving remnant of those captured at Gettysburg--had been prisoners over a year. The next in seniority--the Chickamauga boys--had been in ten months. The Mine Run fellows were eight months old, and my battalion had had seven months' incarceration. None of us were models of well-dressed gentlemen when captured. Our garments told the whole story of the hard campaigning we had undergone. Now, with months of the wear and tear of prison life, sleeping on the sand, working in tunnels, digging wells, etc., we were tattered and torn to an extent t
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