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This illustration, which Thompson called “Soldier’s Kitchen,” shows a small campfire and kettle in the foreground and the boats of the engineers’ pontoon train in the background. While this illustration appears in the margin of Thompson’s May 25, 1863, entry, he had described the pontoon train earlier in his journal while his unit was still training in the Massachusetts capital. The spider he mentioned in the entry below was a frying pan, possibly mounted on a tripod, that he would have used in a setting very much like the one depicted here. (Library of Congress)
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In His Words: The Exceptional Life of Union Engineer Gilbert Thompson
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