t was his duty to have the camp
equipment for each of the posts along the road all together, and kept
together, that it could be unloaded from the train without delay at each
of the different stations. When we reached the first station it was found
that the camp equipage was in the same muddled state as the sergeant's
brains. It was the usual thing when a non-commissioned officer sinned to
reduce him to the ranks. The orderly sergeant of Company K fared the
regular fate in this instance. The new orderly sergeant was a man by the
name of Charles Plummer, a stranger to all of us. He had joined the
company just before we left Worcester. From what we had seen of him at
that time, he gave us the impression of being a man of exceptional
ability. The last vestige of life in the barracks ended at that time,
after that we slept in tents, and each did his own cooking, such as it
was. To break the monotony of our meals, different methods of treating
hardtack were devised--like toasting, moistening and frying, etc. The
canteen wash, when one was willing to carry the water from the stream to
camp, rather than wash at the stream which was usual, consisted in one
soldier holding the canteen and pouring the water on to the hands of No.
2, until No. 2 had got a good wash, then turning about and No. 2 holding
the canteen and pouring the water for No. 1 to have a wash. Our washing of
clothes was most of it done at the stream, but as we had no means of
heating water they were not boiled and were not as clean as they might
have been. It was a common thing for negro women to come around and get
soiled clothes to wash.

Doing picket duty on the railroad we found very uninteresting and
monotonous work, and we were greatly pleased when we heard Governor Andrew
had been at Annapolis, had promised us new guns, and that we had been
assigned to the Ninth Army Corps and were to go on the Burnside
Expedition. Our stay on the railroad was thus cut short, and on December
18 we were relieved from further duty there, and returned to Annapolis. We
then discovered that in our absence out on the railroad, a chaplain had
arrived from Massachusetts, Rev. George S. Ball of Upton, a man whom, as
time went on, we came to have the highest regard for.

December 19. Together with the rest of the troops assembled there, some
ten or twelve thousand men, we were reviewed by General Burnside and on
the 20th there was a grand inspection, after which we were told that th