June 21st
To-day I was initiated in hospital fare and treatment.
The fare consisted of cold, sobby corn bread, cold boiled bacon, very fat, and a kind of tasteless tea, called, by some of my companions, “poplar bark tea.”
The hospital attendants account for our hard fare by saying, that all the commissary and hospital stores were hurriedly removed from
Lynchburg, as the vandal
General Hunter approached, and to prevent their falling into
Hunter's hands.
Early's corps is now hotly pressing him towards
Liberty and
Salem, Virginia, I would I were able to assist in the pursuit.
Yankee armies however are seldom caught when they start on a retreat.
In that branch of tactics they generally excel.
They will run pell-mell, if they think it necessary, prudence, with them, is the better part of valor, and they bear in mind the lines from
Butler's Hudibras--
He who fights and runs away
Will live to fight another day;
But he who fights and is slain
Will never live to fight again.
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