CXLIV
I HAVE just time to write a short letter before going to the Landing to attend to my mail. The indications are that we are going to have a fight today. The Corps has marched out toward the rebel lines, and now a long train of ambulances is going by, which is ominous. This is the day when the old men of Company I figure their time is out, and it is not impossible that some of them may get their final discharges today. I shall go to the Landing, about four miles, for my mail, at ten o’clock, and then hurry out to the front to see how matters are progressing.
We broke camp at Williamsburg on the 4th and embarked from a temporary wharf on the James River. The next morning the bulk of the expedition came up from Fortress Monroe, and it was a great spectacle. As far as the eye could reach swarmed vessels of every description—transports, tugs, ironclads and gunboats. About dark we were at Bermuda Hundred, at the mouth of the Appomattox River. We mounted men were on a different boat from the regiment, and after a vain hunt of a couple hours we gave up trying to find the Second that night and camped by the roadside, picketing our horses and with our saddles for pillows. The next day the troops advanced to our present position, and Heckman’s brigade, of our division, had a smart little fight. Yesterday our boys were throwing up a redoubt down by the Appomattox, but today the work is discontinued and the men have gone out to fight.
I met John Hynes yesterday, on the road to the Landing. [John R., an old-time Manchester printer, in the Third N. H. Regiment.]