Companies A, B & F of the 38th Regiment.

These three Cambridge companies would be the last companies of men for a "New" regiment to go through what was by then called Camp Day. They were part of the most crowded piece of the camps' history. Camp Day had 1500 bunks and at times during this part of the 38'ths stay at the camp as many as 3000 men were assigned to the camp. The over crowding was handled in a couple of ways. First more than one man would sleep in each bunk. Secondly, since most of the 300 men of the 38th lived in Cambridge they were furloughed each night to go home. This may have been true of some of the replacement recruits who also lived locally. They stayed at the camp from August 4 until Aug. 26, 1862. The other seven companies of this regiment went into camp at Camp Stanton in Lynnfield. Originally the Cambridge companies were intended to move to Lynnfield and join the rest of the regiment but they all went to the front before this happened. When they did leave they had so little warning that they had no time to eat the dinning that was cooking for them or to be given rations to take with them. The City had voted to provide trolley cars but the men voted to march on what was the hottest day of the year. One oddity about the seperate formation of these two portions of the regiment is the fact that both groups named their first three compamies A, B, C. This was not discovered or charged until both groups were about to board the train in Boston to go to the war.


DAN SULLIVAN