No 32 
Camp of 23rd Iowa Morganza Bend
 June 17th 1864  
My Dear Wife:  I have been impatient for the week to go by so that I may write again.  I don't want to write every day for fear that you may discover that I am home sick - Well with out Joking I do begin to look forward to the expiration of my term of enlistment with anxiety - Three years is a long time for a man to be absent from home & those he loves so dearly - I received yours (No 29) nearly a week since - & I asure you that I can sympathise with you in not getting mails regularly - We are poorly situated here or have been to get mail matter - Our mail goes to Orleans & then we are not in our old Brigade & this makes it worse.  I think we are now permanently located here (until further orders) which may be a week - a month, possibly longer.  There is Just about that much certainty about military matters - Our mail will at least be sent here as long as we stay.  It is said that Gen Banks changes his "Orders" every few days - I have when writing guessed at diferent times where we would go & sometimes I have been correct.  I think now the policy of Gen Grant is for the forces in the west merely to hold what we have & act on the defensive, keep the Mississippi River clear.  But there are so many aspiring men, some of them like your humble husband with only one bar on their shoulder - others with two - some with the oak leaf, or Eagle, some with a star, that want two so that they appear to be very anxious to go "where there is fighting to do"
