Letter dated March 18th, 1864
March 18, 1864
In camp near Culpeper, Virginia
Dear Ett,
Best beloved of all, I now sit down to answer your last letter. Am happy to hear that your health is better. I wish you could say, as I can, that it has never been better. I (am) still in the same place where we have been for some time past. Still cooking. I got a letter from Dus & Nerva last Thursday night. I set down and answered it that night. I got your letter the same time I got one from Vina the next day, You asked me to send you the Capt & lieutenants likeness. I will if I can get them but I don't know about sending other mens likeness' to my wife. I am afraid you would fall in love with them, then when I come home you will not be all my own, and when I do come home I want you all my own. There I have enough of this, for I know to whom I write and can trust her with all, as I hope you can me. I have got to dreaming lately most every night of you and oh happy I am with you but then I wake to find myself hundreds of miles away and how bad I feel. I (would) give everything for the privilege of clasping you to my heart once more and know that I would not be obliged to ever leave you again. I think this fall will all the drafted men to home, or sooner if spared. Oh god grant that I may be one of that happy number. If I ever pray this is my prayer 'Oh god send me home safe once more.' Nothing but death can ever part us again. There is a great many here that think we will be home by the first of July but I can't hope to come home before fall. We won't get pay again, they say, till May. You spoke about that pin, come to look at it, it is not worth sending so I stuck it up on my tent and it sticks there yet. I will send two rings in this. The one with my name on it is not very well done. I done it in the night and have not had time to change it, but when I get a good one I will make another one. I wish you would get a pair of good rubber suspenders and send me. They would cost me to get them here, one and a half or 2 dollars. There I can't write any more this time so I must say good by.
Yours ever and true W.W.vanAmber
Give my best respects to all