CXLVII
THE discharge of veteran regiments in this command has already begun. Yesterday I went down to Bermuda Hundred with my tentmate, Johnny Powell, and on our way back we met the First Connecticut Heavy Artillery on their way home, their time having expired. The present camp of the Second is delightfully located, in a beautiful pine grove, shady, cool and clean, just to the rear of our rifle-pits. I now have about fifteen minutes’ work each day, carrying the outgoing mail down to brigade headquarters, a distance of a dozen rods, and bringing the regimental mail up over the same course.
Colonel Bailey is determined to go home when we do, and probably will. The regiment will then be reduced below the minimum entitling it to a colonel. Also, if War Department orders are enforced, it will have to be consolidated into companies of one hundred men each and superfluous officers mustered out. Bailey has written to Major Davis, Gen. Butler’s Assistant-Adjutant-General, expressing his wish to be mustered out with the old men and stating the facts in regard to the regiment. His wife, I know, has set her foot down against his staying in the army longer than he is obliged to—just as mine did.
We are having a very quiet time along the lines, just now. For two or three days there has hardly been a shot fired. We have intrenchments behind which we can defy the whole rebel army. But the other night we had noise enough down a little to our right. I had just turned in when it started, and in five minutes there was such a riot that the regiment turned out and manned the breastworks. But our section of the line was not molested, and in half an hour the firing had degenerated into an occasional straggling shot, and the regiment turned in again.
Well, as Bill Pendleton says, “Every day is like an inch on a man’s nose.”