CXLII
SINCE my last letter we have made our first hitch up the Peninsula, and are now about two miles from Williamsburg and one mile from the spot where, two years ago the 5th of May, we had the little scrimmage known as the battle of Williamsburg. We got our orders to march last Friday afternoon, started about sunset, and marched until one o’clock, when we arrived at our present location. Now, who do you suppose I saw last Friday? None other than our old friend Frank Morrill. I was just out of camp at Yorktown, heading for town so as to get my mail off before we started up here, when I heard my name shouted, and turning around, saw some one galloping toward me. And who should it be but Frank! The Third Regiment has not come up yet, and it is not definitely known that they will come, but Frank is signal officer on Gen. Terry’s staff and so came up with the General. [I never saw him again. He was mortally wounded, before Petersburg, in July.]
I have to go clear to Yorktown, now, for my mail. I leave here about one in the afternoon and get back about sunset. For a horse they have given me a great, stout, rawboned “buckskin,” a hard-rider, and the immediate physical effects on a fellow as soft and out of practice as I am have been slightly disastrous. The first day I wore out the seat of my pants, and it didn’t stop wearing when it got through the cloth. As I have to make the trip every day, I am having a pretty tough time getting acclimated, as it were.
Everything here indicates that we will soon be on the move. Orders were issued, day before yesterday, limiting the personal baggage of officers below the rank of brigadier-general to one small valise—to become operative in five days. There are to be only two wagons for each regiment, one of these exclusively for the hospital department. We may not move, though, for a fortnight. Whether or not we are to be discharged before the 4th of June is the main subject of discussion now. If we are not, we may, and probably will, have a chance to see “the dirty Chickahominy” again, and possibly the city of Richmond. When we old fellows are discharged, the Second Regiment is likely to be still further reduced in numbers by transfers to the navy, as permitted by recent orders. Now that I am counting my time by days, I am not troubling myself about how large or how small the regiment may be.