Richard S. Carr

The Progress (Clearfield, Pennsylvania)  27 May 1961
article by Jane Dietzel

"Some of these signs of home are mentioned in a letter written by Pvt. Richard S. Carr, Washington Cadets, from Hampshire County, Va. on the eve of the Bull Run battle.
Pvt. Carr, later to gain rank, sustain a wound or two and watch a brother die of battle wounds, was 19 years old when he wrote on the evening of July 18 1861...

'Our guns are the old musket, but we will get rifles after while. We started off in such a hurry that we could not get rifles. A havelock is something like a bonnet, fixed on our caps to keep the sun off our necks. It is a nice thing.
I am glad to hear that your corn is growing so well, and that your spring wheat is so good. I would like to see it and feel the wheat, feel it when it is just ripe, and in the hot sun.
I think of this and going to pick berries. I have not seen anything that looks like huckleberry bushes here at all.
I want you to have the new house ready for the dance we are to have in the fall. I think I will be home this fall.
Yesterday, I was thinking about home, and I thought I would give all I was worth to get a letter from you or from V.'

A nineteen-year-old-boy, thinking and remembering the feel of wheat on a summer afternoon; huckleberries growing along a dusty country road; looking ahead to a dance 'this fall'--what was he worth? More than he realized before the was ws over."