WE are camped now some ways beyond Bottom Bridge, across the Chickahominy. We have had a pretty strenuous time of it for the past week or two, a good part of the time wallowing through swamps, and our grub supplies very irregular and uncertain. I have had very little to eat besides hard crackers. My first move when I get “out of the wilderness” will be to get a good square meal with all the fixings. In getting to this point, we have, a good part of the time, been literally ploughing through swamp mud. Sometimes, where the road ran through a particularly bad morass, the road was built up and retained by logs along the side, upon which we picked our way after a fashion. But when one slipped or lost his balance it was a serious matter. And when we marched in the night-time it was a double terror. The night we arrived at Bottom Bridge, about midnight and dark as Egypt, I was absolutely cased in mud, and my gun as well, and I had to lie down as I was and wait for daylight to get down to the river for a cleanup.
We are now camped on a hill in the swamp [Poplar Hill,] in a nice clean field of clover. It is going to rain right away, but we have pitched our tent with extra care, have dug a good trench around it to carry the water off unless we have a flood. It rains very often, and the other day we had the fiercest hail storm I ever saw. The stones were very large and came down like cannon balls. I was out of camp and got behind a house, but was well pelted for all that.
When I read the new call for more troops I gave up all idea of a speedy return home. We expect a battle here before Richmond any day, but whether we will get into it or not depends on circumstances. Our camp strategists have got it figured out that we will be used to cut off the retreat of the rebel forces at Fort Darling.
LVII
Fair Oaks, near Richmond, Va.,
Sunday, June 15, 1562.
IT has been some time since I last wrote, and you are doubtless getting anxious. We are now camped on the battlefield of Fair Oaks. We were not in the battle, but were in line, with skirmishers thrown out and batteries posted, waiting for the attack that never came and listening to the rattle of musketry off to our right. We did not come here until the second day after the fight. Before we started all our baggage was sent to the rear, and with my knapsack went my writing materials. We are having rough duty now. Every third day the entire regiment goes on picket duty for twenty-four hours, which means, as a rule, not even a cat-nap in that time. I was just settling myself for a good sleep today, when the cry went up that our knapsacks had come; so I sorted mine out from the heap and set to work to write some letters.
We arrived here about three o’clock in the afternoon and immediately went on duty for twenty-four hours. It rained all night—a steady downpour—and the whole country was flooded. Coming up, we waded for considerable distances through ponds from ankle to knee deep. Here it was just mud and water. The trenches we would have jumped into in case of an attack were half filled with water. Even if it had been permitted, there was no chance to lie down—no chance for much of anything but to stand up and take it through the long hours of the night. I did manage to get a few slicks of cordwood together and cobbled up a roost that gave two or three of us a sort of perch out of the mud. Directly in front of me lay a dead horse and a dead rebel. Within a short distance were perhaps a hundred dead horses—all killed when the rebels made their rush on our batteries on the first day. These have about all been cleaned up now, by burning, wood being piled upon them and great bonfires made.