During the first week of December, 1863, the 55th Ohio, with the rest of Colonel Orland Smith's brigade, led General W.T. Sherman's relief column towards Knoxville, Tennessee, to relieve the union forces besieged there by Confederate General James Longstreet. By the 5th of December, it had become apparent that the besieging rebels had failed and had started back towards Virginia. The Union forces camped at Louisville, until the 7th, when they started the march back to Chattanooga, arriving there on the 17th. Col. Smith noted of his brigade that every soldier answered roll call when they had left Chattanooga, still answered it upon there return, "a result which I regard as highly commendable, when it is considered that many men were entirely shoeless. Marching as we did without shelter of any kind, except a few gum blankets, all knapsacks, blankets and shelter tents having been left behind at Chattanooga, subsisting for a major portion of the time upon the country. . . a large portion of the time without sugar or coffee, it is to be supposed that our movements were attended with some privation and suffering. Nevertheless . . . every labor, every privation, every suffering was borne with a patience and cheerfulness worthy of patriots, who are above mercenary considerations. I must claim for them an abstinence from straggling or marauding worthy of commendation under the circumstances."By Christmas Eve, rations were in short supply. The 55th Ohio didn't get them until 9:00 p.m. that evening and that was just a few hardtack and some beans.
Sources:
Trials and Triumphs: A Record of the Fifty-Fifth Ohio Volunteer Infantry by Hartwell Osborne, 1904, A.C. Clurg & Co., Chicago.
All Brave And True by Dan Munson, 1987.