of horses that we were dismounted, the officers,
of course, retaining their own horses, and the regiment moved back into a
camp near the landing at Bermuda Hundred. While here one of our
Lieutenants, named Bittner, got into a quarrel with the sutler, and,
taking about ten men with their carbines, went to the sutler's tent and
ordered his men to tear it down, which they proceeded to do when the
sutler came out with a revolver and blazed away at Bittner's head, putting
a bullet through his jaw, into his throat, whereupon Bittner's men opened
fire on the sutler with their carbines and the sutler ran for his life,
the men chasing him and firing as fast as they could, and managed to put a
bullet through the sutler's lungs from rear to front. He ran into the
adjutant's tent, and falling on his cot, died there: and a few minutes
afterwards they brought Bittner into camp on a board. He survived the
wound. A few days thereafter Lieutenant Spencer, by the Colonel's order,
shot one of the men dead in his tracks for disobedience of orders. We lay
there in camp for a while, and then were sent into the lines about
Petersburg, and details were made each day to act as ambulance corps and
haul away the dead and wounded, who were all the time falling on the siege
lines. While engaged in this work one day, two men got into a quarrel and
one of them shot the other one dead in the Company street. He was at once
arrested and tried by general court martial, and one day he was brought
into camp by the provost guard with an order that he be hanged at once in
the presence of the regiment. So a squad was sent into the woods to
prepare the scaffold, and another went to the quartermaster's train for a
piece of rope, and another dug the grave. It was a drizzly day and the
ground wet, so the grave soon filled with water. The regiment was drawn up
on three sides of a square around the grave and the prisoner was brought
in an old farm cart, drawn by hand. The rope was adjusted around his neck,
and then the cart was drawn out from under him, but the rope was new and
wet and he hung dangling and kicking in the air, so the old grizzle
bearded sergeant, who had charge of the execution squad, took hold of his
feet and pulled down till he broke the prisoner's neck, and so the
performance was ended.

Late in the fall of 1864 we were sent to Norfolk, Va., to do Provost Guard
duty, and were there to the end of the war. Norfolk was at that time the
base of suppl