John D. Billings, Hardtack and Coffee: The Unwritten Story of Army Life

[54] off recuperating, as the Army of the Potomac did a few weeks after the Gettysburg campaign, they would pitch their shelters high enough to get a free circulation of air beneath, and to enable them to build bunks or cots a foot or two above the ground. I the camp was not in the woods, it was common to build a bower of branches over the tents, to ward off the sun.

When cold weathther came on, the soldiers built the stockades to which I have already referred.

Shaded shelters

The walls of these structures were raised from two to five feet, according to the taste or working inclination of the intended occupants. Oftentimes an excavation was made one or two feet deep. When such was the case, the walls were not built so high. Such a hut was warmer than one built entirely above ground. The size depended upon the number of the proposed mess. If the hut was to be occupied by two, it was built nearly square, and covered by two half-shelters. Such a stockade would and often did accommodate three men, the third using his half-shelter to stop up one gable. When four men occupied a stockade, it was built accordingly, and covered by four half-shelters. In each case these were stretched over a framework of light rafters raised on the walls of the stockade. Sometimes the gables were built up to the ridge-poles with smaller logs, but just as often they were filled by an extra halfshelter, a rubber blanket, or an old poncho. An army poncho, I may here say, is specified as made of unbleached muslin coated with vulcanized India-rubber, sixty inches