Some of the men who came out in the morning with me were dead, others wounded, but we held our first position. This heavy force I saw would strike our line of battle on the flank and rear. We ran in a stooping posture, so as to gain all the concealment possible from the corn, which was 4-1/2 feet high.Įverything progressed favorably until about noon, when with my glass I could see a column of the enemy crossing the river 2 miles below us. I would leave a man at every two rods, who would at once commence returning the fire. I then deployed my men as fast as possible under fire, conducting them on the run through a corn field where our flank was constantly reciving the reb fire. I crossed the river with my pickets and at once found that I should have to fight for a posish, so I moved my men to a knoll where we slightly infiladed the reb pickets, and giving them a few shots we gained a starting point. Our batteries had already been engaged about half an hour with some force in our front-how large we did not know. Captain Parker of Company "F" was the senior officer on picket, but he kept himself in a safe place, leaving everything that required exposure to me. I will commence my memorandum where it was suddenly terminated yesterday by an order from Brigade Head Quarters, again ordering me to take out and establish a picket line. Diary: JThe pay question is cleared up but he fails to connect with the paymaster.Diary: JThe regiment is paid but his has a problem.Diary: JDinner with a local, and the honey deal.Letter: JRecap of recent days, a sweet deal for honey.Diary: JCrossed the Blue Ridge and the Shenandoah.Diary: JAn inconvenient alcohol policy, return to Washington and then to Snicker's Gap.Diary: JSkirmishing and a retreat to Ellicott's Mills.Jones (his great-granddaughter) Copyright © 1993, Phyllis G. The Diary and Letters of Abiel Teple LaForge 1842-1878 Transcribed, edited, and annotated by Phyllis G. It really gives a sense of how lucky any specific individual was to survive the entire war. The level of detail he sometimes records from active engagements is startling. Abiel sometimes makes comments that address issues of larger strategy, so I suspect he was constantly aware of the importance of even those "meaningless" manoevers. Move here, move there, engage, retreat, end up back where you started a week ago with nothing obvious to show for it except casualties. The biggest take-away from this set of entries is how meaningless a lot of the on-the-ground action must have seemed to the average soldier.