photo and story from A Drummers Boy Diary
Four Years of Service With the Second Minnesota Veteran Volunteers
by William Bircher
What a glorious camp-fire we had that Christmas eve of 1864! It makes me rub my hands together to think of it. The nights were getting cold and frosty, so that it was impossible to sleep under our little shelter-tents with comfort ; and so, half the night was spent around the blazing fires in front of our tents. I always took care that there should be a blazing good fire for our little squad, anyhow.My duties were light and left me time, which I found I could spend with pleasure in swinging an axe. Hickory and white-oak saplings were my favorites, and I had them piled up as high as my head on wooden fire-dogs. What a glorious crackle we had by midnight! We could go out to the fire at any time of night we pleased (and we were pretty sure to go out three or four times a night, for it was too cold to sleep in the tent more than an hour at a stretch), and we would always find half a dozen of the boys sitting about the fire-logs, smoking their pipes, telling yarns, or singing snatches of old songs. Rhoades, Ripley, Chase, and Chamberlain were all good singers. I hoped that we might live to recall those weird night-scenes of army-life, the blazing fires, the groups of swarthy men that gathered about them in the darkness of the forests, where the lights and shadows danced and played all night long, and the rows of little white tents covered with frost, It looked quite poetical in the retrospect, but I fear it was sometimes prosy enough in the reality " If you fellows would stop your everlasting arguing there, and go out and bring in some wood, it would be a good deal better ; for if we don't have a big camp-fire to-night we'll freeze in this snow-storm." So saying, Kelsey Chase threw down the butt end of a pine-sapling, which he had been half dragging, half-carrying out of the woods in which we were encamped, and, axe in hand, fell to work with a will. There was, indeed, some need to follow Kelsey's advice, for it was snowing fast and was getting bitterly cold, the wind coming straight off the coast, which was but a few miles south of the camp. It was Christmas eve, and here we were with no protection but our little shelter-tents pitched on the hard, frozen ground. It was hard to be homeless at this merry season of the year, when folks up North were having such happy times, wasn't it ? But it was wonderful how elastic the spirits of our soldiers were, and how jolly they could be under the most adverse circumstances. ........ it was full one o'clock on Christmas morning, and we began to drop off to sleep, some rolling themselves up in their blankets and overcoats and lying down, Indian fashion, feet to the fire, while others crept off to their cold shelter-tents under the snow-laden pine-trees for what poor rest they could find, jocularly wishing each other a " Merry Christmas !"
(ok, I may be about three days late posting this. What is the old saying - "a day late and a dollar short") 
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