Unusual Shelters

[CThrasher]

We are all familiar with shelter tents in the field and barracks in permanent forts, but recently I got to thinking about unusual shelters used during the war.

While garrisoning Port Hudson, Louisiana soldier Robert Patrick got a friend working in a government carpentry shop to make "me two trestles or benches on which to lay some planks for a bed." He later got "an old door shutter, which I laid on top of the trestles on on top of this I laid some hay and then my blankets which made a tolerable bed and kept me off the damp ground."
Robert Patrick, The Secret Diary of Robert Patrick, 47.

During the siege of Nashville Confederate soldiers dug pits big enough for two or three men with a fire pit at the end. It kept them out of the winter wind, but Edgar Jones did not like them because it gave him "a graveyard feeling" since the shelters were so similar to graves.
Edgar W. Jones "History of the 18th Alabama Infantry."

Here is a picture of a tent post office, used by the Union 2nd Corps, which appears to have a window in the door.

Martha Perry, Letters from a Surgeon, 77.

I would love to learn about other examples of unusual shelters.

What was the most unusual shelter of the war?

 

[Trooper "D"]

We are all familiar with shelter tents in the field and barracks in permanent forts, but recently I got to thinking about unusual shelters used during the war.

While garrisoning Port Hudson, Louisiana soldier Robert Patrick got a friend working in a government carpentry shop to make "me two trestles or benches on which to lay some planks for a bed." He later got "an old door shutter, which I laid on top of the trestles on on top of this I laid some hay and then my blankets which made a tolerable bed and kept me off the damp ground."
Robert Patrick, The Secret Diary of Robert Patrick, 47.

During the siege of Nashville Confederate soldiers dug pits big enough for two or three men with a fire pit at the end. It kept them out of the winter wind, but Edgar Jones did not like them because it gave him "a graveyard feeling" since the shelters were so similar to graves.
Edgar W. Jones "History of the 18th Alabama Infantry."

Here is a picture of a tent post office, used by the Union 2nd Corps, which appears to have a window in the door.
View attachment 443257
Martha Perry, Letters from a Surgeon, 77.

I would love to learn about other examples of unusual shelters.

What was the most unusual shelter of the war?

Shebang I think its the term used for impromptu shelters. Wooden lean to to a small cabin. Boughs of trees laid upside down to deflect water makes a good slanted roof.

 

[7thWisconsin]

At Petersburg, in some areas there was so much timber that the soldiers could make lean-tos big enough for 4-5 men of entire logs laid on a frame. These were somewhat dangerous, however, because they were very heavy and might seriously injure or kill a man if the lean to collapsed.