We turned in for a night’s sleep, Monday, but didn’t get it. An orderly came in about midnight, with orders, and the regiment was moved out about two miles on the Centreville road and deployed as pickets. I was on camp guard that night, and had not had a wink of sleep when we started. O, how sleepy I was! I actually fell asleep walking in the ranks, until I would wake myself by running into the man ahead of me. When the regiment was distributed as pickets, the camp guard detail was held in reserve, and had nothing to do but wait for something to turn up. I sat down without loosening a buckle of my equipments, leaned my back against a small tree, and was asleep on the instant. I slept perhaps a couple hours, and then woke up out of a nightmare. I dreamed I was in swimming and dove to the bottom, but when I tried to come up again it was no go. I kicked and struggled in vain. When at last I awoke I found I had slipped away from my tree and was lying with my head down hill, but so cumbered with my harness that I had hard work to straighten myself out again.
Wednesday morning the entire Fifth Corps passed us, and then our regiment marched down to Blackburn’s Ford and waited for the division to come up. We got away from the Ford about three o’clock in the afternoon and marched three or four miles, to our present position about a mile out of Centreville on the old Bull Run road.
What I am suffering for now is a newspaper, so I can find out what is going on. I have not seen one since we left Washington.
Gum Springs, Va., Sunday, June 21.
We have made another hitch, about a dozen miles, and now find ourselves in this great Virginia metropolis, consisting of a meeting house, a cooper’s shop, and half a dozen houses and hog pens, none in very good repair. We marched here day before yesterday, leaving Centreville after noon and arriving here before sunset. The fool camp story now being passed from mouth to mouth is that the corps is now surrounded by the rebels. There can be no question, though, that there are any quantity of guerrillas lurking around, and a man outside the camp lines does well to keep his eye peeled. [This was Mosby’s country.] It is said they picked up some thirty stragglers on the march up here. Yesterday they scooped in one of General Birney’s aides and two of his orderlies. A couple of them made the mistake of their lives yesterday. The lieutenant-colonel of one of the New Jersey regiments with which we are now brigaded had dismounted and gone some distance from his horse, when he spied two innocent-looking “farmers,” with shot-guns in their hands, coming the sneak act. At the proper moment they looked into the yawning muzzles of two six-shooters, with a very determined Yankee behind them, and didn’t hesitate a moment in accepting his polite invitation to drop their guns and come along.
We had one of the heaviest rains I ever saw, Thursday afternoon. I did not have any tent pitched, but sat down on my knapsack, covered myself in with my rubber poncho and let her rain. It did much good by laying the dust for a few hours. That night there was a very large detail from our regiment, for picket, and my good luck kept me off the job. Charlie Parrott [killed, a few days later, at Gettysburg] was one of the detail, and I loaned him my poncho in exchange for his piece of shelter tent. That night several of us joined together and patched up a shelter with as many gable ends, almost, as there were pieces of tent. We made a very thick bed of leaves and bushes and managed to keep pretty dry and comfortable, notwithstanding there was a good deal of rain through the night.
We are camped in a very pretty location, on a little ridge with a railroad along its crest and a little creek at the foot. Just across the creek is the little hamlet of Gum Springs. There is a spring there with reputed medicinal qualities. Ed. Kenniston and I have pitched our tent in the shade of a mammoth persimmon tree.
There is a commotion now in that select corps familiarly known as “bummers,” such as cooks, officers’ waiters, &c. There is an order that every enlisted man shall tote a gun. This means that our kettles will be thrown away and every man be his own meat cook. But that won’t make much change. We have been on a salt pork diet, almost exclusively, and every man has been privileged to fry, broil, or eat raw, according to his fancy.
The big guns are booming over towards the mountains, and in compliance with orders we have put ourselves in marching order—knapsacks packed, &c. But I have pulled my portfolio out to write a little more. We may move today, or we may not, but we are ready. Several prisoners have been brought in today—probably scouts or guerrillas. Our bands are playing all the time and making all the noise they can, possibly merely for their own amusement. The firing off to the west is growing heavier, and there is evidently a lively little fight on somewhere.