LVI
WE are camped now some ways beyond Bottom Bridge, across the Chickahominy. We have had a pretty strenuous time of it for the past week or two, a good part of the time wallowing through swamps, and our grub supplies very irregular and uncertain. I have had very little to eat besides hard crackers. My first move when I get “out of the wilderness” will be to get a good square meal with all the fixings. In getting to this point, we have, a good part of the time, been literally ploughing through swamp mud. Sometimes, where the road ran through a particularly bad morass, the road was built up and retained by logs along the side, upon which we picked our way after a fashion. But when one slipped or lost his balance it was a serious matter. And when we marched in the night-time it was a double terror. The night we arrived at Bottom Bridge, about midnight and dark as Egypt, I was absolutely cased in mud, and my gun as well, and I had to lie down as I was and wait for daylight to get down to the river for a cleanup.
We are now camped on a hill in the swamp [Poplar Hill,] in a nice clean field of clover. It is going to rain right away, but we have pitched our tent with extra care, have dug a good trench around it to carry the water off unless we have a flood. It rains very often, and the other day we had the fiercest hail storm I ever saw. The stones were very large and came down like cannon balls. I was out of camp and got behind a house, but was well pelted for all that.
When I read the new call for more troops I gave up all idea of a speedy return home. We expect a battle here before Richmond any day, but whether we will get into it or not depends on circumstances. Our camp strategists have got it figured out that we will be used to cut off the retreat of the rebel forces at Fort Darling.