noon
It seems strange , and unbelievable to those who have never experienced extreme hunger or thirst , that the imagination can picture eatables and streams of running water , so plain that one will almost reach for the eatables , or rush for the imaginary stream , to plunge in and quench thirst , but I have experienced both of those sensations for thirteen dollars a month , and nary a pension yet . It is such experiences that bring gray hairs to the temples of young soldiers , and cause eyes to become hollow and sunken in the head . Today , your Uncle Samuel has not got silver dollars enough in his treasury to hire me to suffer one day of such hunger as to make me see things that were not there , but twenty-two years ago it was easy to have fun over it , and to laugh it off the next day . When we stopped that day , at noon , to rest , the company commissary sergeant came up to the company , with two men carrying the hind quarter of an animal that had been slaughtered , and he began to cut it up and issue it out to the men . It was peculiar looking meat , but it was meat , and every fellow took his ration , and it was not long before the smell of broiled fresh meat could be `` heard '' all around . When I took my meat I asked the sergeant what it was , and where he got it . I shall always remember his answer .