e a
number of the Second Corps died of sunstroke. Lieut. Elmore was stricken
down by it. He lay on the ground almost motionless--was quite out of his
head and talked crazy. He was put into an ambulance, and sent to
hospital.

Wednesday, the 17th, at the close of the day, we halted at Pope's Run on
the Orange & Alexandria R. R. Thursday, the 18th, no move was made,
except to change camp. In the afternoon of Friday (the 19th) we moved
and halted in the evening at Centreville, the place we had been in about
nine months before. Saturday about noon we left Centreville for
Thoroughfare Gap. We passed over the two Bull Run battlefields, which
were fought about a year apart. On the field of 1861 the dead had been
buried with the least expenditure of labor. I should say the bodies had
been laid close together, and a thin coat of earth thrown over them. As
the bodies decayed, the crust fell in exposing in part the skeletons.
Some of our men extracted teeth from the grinning skulls as they lay
thus exposed to view. On the field of 1862 from one mound a hand stuck
out. The flesh instead of rotting off had dried down, and there it was
like a piece of dirty marble. Such sights are not refreshing to men
going forward in search of a new battlefield. Thoroughfare Gap was
reached during the night. We remained in this place until noon of
Thursday, the 25th, when we moved, the enemy following us up quite
sharply with artillery.

After dark we camped at Gum Spring. It had rained all day. I was placed
in charge of the picket line that night, and visited the posts wet to
the skin. In the morning a young and innocent calf was sporting in the
field we occupied. Some of our wickedest men ended the life of that calf
skinned it, and gave me a chunk. I expected to have an unusually good
meal out of it. No time was found to cook this meat until we halted at
Edward's Ferry on the Potomac, where we expected to spend the night.
Collins and I proposed to have a great meal out of our piece of veal.
Our man "Robert" fried it in the stew pan, which was the half of a
canteen, and brought it on smoking hot. The experiment of trying to eat
it disclosed the fact that it was "deeken veal" and very "_stringy_," I
think the Spanish war soldiers would have called it. We discarded it and
went back to "salt hoss."

That night we crossed the Potomac on a pontoon, and were again in "My
Maryland." The performances this night were such as to justify vocal
daming on