About the 1st of February the brigade, with other troops under General Pickett, marched to New Berne, lower down on the Neuse. The town was invested and there was some fighting, some outposts taken and prisoners captured as well as considerable stores, but the town was not attacked, nor was the Eleventh Regiment actively engaged, though at one time the brigade was drawn up in line of battle, and all thought that we were going into a fight. I remember as the line was being formed, seeing the drummers with their drums slung over their shoulders going back to where the surgeons had selected a position for the field hospital, to assist the doctors. I remarked to some one that if I lived through the war, I intended to have all my boys learn to beat the drum. Whenever the drummers and the cavalry were seen going to the rear, some one was sure to say, "Look out, boys, we are going to have a fight." The troops marched back to Kinston, thence to Goldsboro, where we remained until the 20th of February, when we again marched to Kinston.
About this time, I got a twenty-days' furlough and went home. Many of the officers and men got furloughs during the winter, as there was little or no fighting going on.
MARCHING THROUGH SWAMPS AND SAND
We lived pretty well while marching and tramping around through the swamps and sands of Eastern North Carolina, but some of the marches were very trying. In places the roadbeds were worn down a foot or two; in rainy weather the roads would be full of mud and water half-leg deep, through which we tramped for miles on a stretch, the roadside being closely bordered with thick-growing bushes and intertwining vines; it was impossible to avoid the slush and water. Often when a particularly muddy stretch of road, or a big, deep mudhole was encountered, some wag would call out, "Boys, you have been looking for a soft place, here it is." By the "soft place" was meant an easy, bomb-proof detail, where there was no fighting, picket or guard duty to perform.
Some of these marches were made in the night time, when the men would splash and flounder along through the mud, some swearing, some laughing and cracking jokes, and ever and anon, the "Bonnie Blue Flag," "Dixie," or some other patriotic song would be started, when the woodland would ring for miles with the songs, and the echoes go rolling through the swamps and marshes.
In some sections the roads ran through high and dry lands, the roadbeds filled with loose, white sand, over which the marching was very laborious; sometimes through the long-leaf pine turpentine orchards, as they were called—great forests of tall pines, the bark from two sides of the trees being scraped off, with steel-bladed knives on long poles, many feet from the ground, so that when the sap rises it exudes freely, running down the trunks of the trees into deep notches near the ground, cut with long-bladed axes, made for the purpose, and then dipped out into buckets and conveyed to the turpentine distillery.
During the winter these scraped-off surfaces are incrusted with dried rosin, which burns freely when set on fire, the blaze running up the trees many feet. On these night marches sometimes the soldiers would apply the torch to the rosin-covered trees along the roadside, when the woods and country around would be lighted up, the flames leaping up the tall pines to the very tops; the long, gray moss hanging in festoons from the branches of the live oaks interspersed among the pines, the glare of the long streaks of flame reflecting on the white sand, scintillating like carpets woven of silver threads and sprinkled with tiny diamonds; the gloom off in the woods beyond the penetration of the light, and anon the hooting of the big owl and the scream of the nighthawk—all brought to mind scenes described in fairy tales, where witches and goblins in fantastic attire and shapes participate in high carnival, reveling with kindred spirits in some vale of tangled wild-wood, deep hidden and embossed in the gloom, save for the glare of the torches of the devotees—while the gray lines of the soldiers, like grim spectral figures stalking along betwixt the blazing trees, the red lights flashing from their burnished muskets and bayonets, reflected on their begrimed faces, resembled gigantic and uncanny figures moving amidst the flames of some plutorion realm.
These high, sandy roads traverse the country between Goldsboro, Kinston, and Tarboro.
While I was on furlough, the command went by train to Wilmington, thence by steamer down Cape Fear River to Smithville, opposite Fort Fisher, camping on the seashore, where the men feasted on oysters and fish.
After the expiration of my furlough I returned to the command, which was, when I left home, still on the seashore, but on my arrival at Wilmington I met the brigade on the return trip up the river on the way to Goldsboro, where we remained until the 1st of April, then marched to Tarboro on Tar River, when some one started a report that "Tar River was on fire," but the report, like many others circulated in the army, proved untrue. These rumors were called "grapevine dispatches," and were about on a par with the weather man's reports of to-day. While at Manassas the first year of the war a report was circulated that the Black Horse Cavalry had captured the Yankee gunboat Pawnee on the Potomac River.