At this place we arrived in safety after a long and tedious march of nearly twenty miles, along a heavy, sandy road plentifully bestrewn with dead mules, wagons broken or stuck in the swamps, and abandoned, and all the debris usually to be seen on the line of communication between a large army and its base. Our march was only marked by the incidents common to such a trip; an overturned wagon now and then to be righted, or a broken-down mule to be led to the roadside and shot; a vexatious delay of perhaps half an hour, to make some repair to harness or wheels, and then a forced march for a mile or two to catch up with the rest of the train.
To any one that has never tried it, the task of guarding a wagon train may, perhaps, be recommended as an amusement, on the score of novelty, but we hardly think it is one that can be either pleasantly or profitably followed up, as a steady trade.
On arriving at Cool Arbor we were assigned to the 1st Brigade, 3d Division of the 9th, or Burnside's, Army Corps, temporarily attached to the Army of the Potomac, though in reality belonging to no army in particular, and better known amongst military men as "Burnside's Traveling Menagerie," so called, not from the heterogeneous collection composing it, but from the wandering nature of the service it had been engaged in since its organization. Our Division Commander was Brig. Gen. O. B. Willcox, of the regular army, since promoted to be Brevet Major General, and our Brigade Commander, Brig. Gen. John F. Hartranft, afterwards Major General of Volunteers, commanding the Third Provisional Division of the 9th Army Corps.
On the morning of the 12th of June we were ordered from the position we held on the flank, into the front line of works, where we had the pleasure of listening to the music of shot and shell, and of inspecting a rebel line of fortifications, for the first time.
[CHAPTER II.]
THE SIEGE OF PETERSBURG.
On the evening of the 12th of June, just as we had settled ourselves down, to pass, as best we might, our first night in the trenches, and amid the roar of artillery and the uncouth yells of the combatants, to snatch a few hours' much needed sleep, we received orders to pack up and be ready to march an hour after sundown, to exercise the utmost caution in our movements, and to allow no talking nor rattling of arms, accoutrements or equipage to be heard, bayonets to be unfixed and arms carried at the trail.
And it was so. Quietly and stealthily on that still June evening the whole Army of the Potomac stole away from under the dark sombre pine woods where it laid encamped, and commenced its flank march on Petersburg. Our road, for the first ten or twelve miles, lay in the direction of White House Landing, and, except that we kept to the fields, the roads being occupied by our trains and artillery, was almost a repetition of our route from the Landing to the front.
Just short of White House, however, we turned sharp to the right and kept away for Baltimore and Kent Cross Roads and Charles City Court House. At the last named place we were delayed some twelve hours by the 2d Corps supply train failing to connect, thus affording us a rest, which, however much it may have disconcerted the plans of the Lieutenant General, was very acceptable to the men, on whom the long and rapid marching was beginning to tell.