CXXXVI
Point Lookout, Md.,Friday, March 25, 1864.
Point Lookout, Md.,Friday, March 25, 1864.
Point Lookout, Md.,Friday, March 25, 1864.
Point Lookout, Md.,Friday, March 25, 1864.
I BELIEVEI was never lamer or more absolutely used up than I am right at this present moment, the result of my participation in a great snowball battle, yesterday, between the Second and Twelfth. I emerged with both eyes blacked and a big cut over one, with minor contusions too numerous to mention, and thoroughly soaked and bedraggled from top to bottom. The Twelfth turned outen masse, which was more than our fellows did, as half of them were lying in their bunks, asleep, having been on guard the night before, while our subs didn’t care nor dare to mix into anything so strenuous. The Twelfth mustered three men to our one, but we held up our end in good shape. At the close both sides got to throwing ice and bricks, and several men received quite severe injuries.
It was a great storm that brought that snow down upon us. It set in Tuesday, and at 9 o’clock in the evening was at its height—the fiercest storm, by all odds, I have ever seen in this part of the country. I slept in a bunk in the company cook-house. Snugly curled up, I slept perhaps a couple hours, when I woke up and decided to straighten out my cramped limbs. I opened out like a jack-knife, took just one second to catch my breath, and pulled up again like a turtle going into his shell. I had rammed both head and feet into a snowdrift. The next morning the inside of our tent was like a view in the arctic regions—everything covered or filled with snow. In front of the tent was a drift five feet deep. I guess it was about the toughest snowstorm this part of Maryland ever experienced.
Evening.—I have a little piece of news which I know will make your heart glad. I have decided not to go to Washington nor to make any further move for a commission. The move served as an anchor to windward in case I should otherwise have to go back to company duty under Gordon. I appreciated that it was a good deal like deserting you to go off again, perhaps for years. But things have come my way, and I do not want a commission now any more than I have in the past, but will come home and settle down in a few weeks.
No sooner did I make known my disinclination to go to Washington than an order was made out detailing me again as regimental P. M., and I am once more on my old job. Oh, it was sweet—the way I threw the hooks into the captain! I was in the adjutant’s office, playing cribbage, when Gordon came in. Just as he was going out he turned to me and said, “Well, Haynes, when do you expect your furlough back?” “I don’t know when it will come,” I answered, nonchalantly, “but probably before long.” “Well,” he snapped back, “if it doesn’t come in a day or two I’ll have to give you a gun and put you on duty.” “All right!” I said—and butter wouldn’t have melted in my mouth. But no sooner had he gone than John Cooper, the adjutant, turned to Hen. Everett and said, “Make out a special order detailing Mart. for special duty at these headquarters, and serve it on Captain Gordon.” The thing was done so quickly that Gordon was hardly back to his tent before the order reached him. It tickled Bill Ramsdell and my particular gang immensely, and I could see them going around and laughing and slapping each other on the back.
Saturday, March 26.
Saturday, March 26.
Saturday, March 26.
Saturday, March 26.
I have been at work today fixing up my tent, and expect to move into it tonight. The Washington mail is taken off, which makes my already light work much lighter. The boat is needed in carrying troops to the Peninsula, which the camp strategists think it likely will be Grant’s line of advance on Richmond. And it is also the general impression that we will leave here before many weeks.