That afternoon, to our surprise, we received a ration of three-quarters of a pound of flour to each man. When we had baked it, I happened to go by Tom Booker’s position and saw him eating the entire cake. Tom looked at me pitifully as I remonstrated with him for eating three days’ rations in advance, and he said with tears in his voice if not in his eyes: “I know it, but I’m go’n’ t’ fill my stomach once, if I starve for it. I wish I was a woman or a baby.”
A few minutes later came the order to move; our battery was at that time unhorsed. It had been planned to leave it in the rear, because its guns could not be moved for lack of horses, but with one voice the men had demanded the privilege of taking rifles and going with the battalion as sharp-shooters.
On this march the battalion was the rear guard of the army, and our rifle-armed battery was the rear guard of the battalion.
For fifty-six hours we marched without food or sleep, pausing every fifteen minutes to fight awhile, and then double-quicking to catch up.
There was no chance for Griffith in all this. But when we got to Cold Harbor, and went into the works, Billy Goodwin at a favorable moment insisted that he should resume his story.
“You see I’ve got three bets on it,” said Billy.
Just then a grape-shot passed through George Campbell’s foot, and distracted our attention for a time. Then came General Field, who ordered us to burn a barn in front that was full of sharp-shooters. The first two or three shots from the battalion did the business. The sharp-shooters ran with all their might across a thousand yards of space, while we poured upon them the sharpest rifle fire we could deliver. Some of them got to cover, and some of them didn’t.
It was not till we moved to Bottom’s Bridge that Griffith had a chance to resume his story. There we were all sick from having eaten boiled potato vines, for lack of other food. Being too ill to go to sleep, we demanded a continuation of the story.
“Well, as I wuz a-sayin’,” said Griffith, “I’d gone clean through the rule o’ three in Fletch Massie’s school, and Peter Coffee he knew it. As I told yuh, he’d taken the cawntract to lay out this bridge work; so he got his wife to write to me to come up and do the ’rithmetic. Well, just as I wuz startin’ up, Bill Linsey says to me,—you know he kept a store down there at Arrington, he says to me, says he, ‘Griffith, there’s a runlet o’ cider that’s got twenty gallon in it. Can you lif’ it?’ I says, ‘Yes, I can lif’ it and drink out o’ the bung, if you’ll let me drink es much es I please.’ I lifted it and took a big swallow of the sweet stuff, then I says, ‘I can carry it up the mountain,’ says I, and he says, says he, ‘On your back?’ says he, an’ I says, ‘Yes, on my back,’ says I. An’ he says, says he, ‘Well, you can have it ef you’ll agree to carry it up the mountain on your back, and not take no lift frum nobody.’”
Just then a battery, three thousand yards away, opened on us, and we had to run to cover, every man of us with his hands on his stomach, in physical memory of the potato vines. Our guns were not in position, and all we could do was to ensconce ourselves behind big trees. As the artillery fire kept up, General Alexander rode to this point of the lines and ordered up three batteries of rifled cannon; by the time they had finished their little controversy with the enemy, we had recovered from the potato tops sufficiently to go to sleep. So Griffith’s story was to be “continued in our next.”