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Updated: June 2, 2025
On wheels we had, to accompany this column, eight ambulances, sixteen ammunition wagons, a pontoon train for eight canvas boats, and a small supply-train, with fifteen days' rations of coffee, sugar, and salt, it being intended to depend on the country for the meat and bread ration, the men carrying in their haversacks nearly enough to subsist them till out of the exhausted valley.
Once, in a cloud of dust, we passed troops marching toward the front tired faces, laughing faces the shout "Man in the road !" and then the glimpse of a couple of Red Cross men kneeling by a soldier who had given out on the way; once, in the black pines, cows driven by two little frightened peasant children; once a long line of bearded Jews, bound, with packs on their backs, for what was left of their homes; a supply-train, a clanking battery, and now and then other motors like ours with shrouded gray figures, streaking by in a flashing mist of dust.
With a perspiration up for all day I set out along the track. Hounding Diablo Hill the realization that I was hungry came upon me simultaneously with the thought that unless I got through the door of Corozal hotel by 7:30 I was likely to remain so. Breakfast over, I caught the morning supply-train to Miraflores, there to dash through the locks for a five-minute interview.
My own march was impeded by the slow progress of the pontoon-train which had been sent ahead of my column, where a part of Slocum's supply-train also moved. For this reason we found numbers of stragglers on our way and evidences of pillaging by which I was exasperated. We halted at noon of the 11th near a large house belonging to a Mr. Atkinson, a man of prominence in the region.
The enemy at this time were at least twenty miles in advance of their supports, and a night's march would have readily placed the several forces mentioned in position to attack them by daylight. This was Wallace's plan, simple, feasible, and soldier-like. All his orders were given. A supply-train with extra ammunition and abundant rations was in line on the road to Richmond.
Even the horses of the officers and the mules of the supply-train were infected by something that seemed impending; they grew restless, stamped the earth, and vainly essayed to stampede, but were prevented by their hobbles and picket-pins.
The winter finally passed away, and early in the spring, as soon as we could travel, the civil employees of the government, with the teamsters and freighters, started for the Missouri River, the Johnston expedition having been abandoned. On the way down we stopped at Fort Laramie, and there met a supply-train bound westward.
"You have already had some hand in it, for you have rendered one company of Confederate cavalry hors de combat, and saved that supply-train; and the general has had some anxiety about it, for it would be a godsend to the enemy, half starved as they are. Thus you have rendered a double service to our army. But what are you doing over here?"
And these lower functions, when out-marched, do not lag behind, but keep in touch with the others, forming the rear-guard and supply-train of the army. And notice that each organ holds the predominance about as long as it shows the power of rapid improvement. The length of its reign is pretty closely proportional to its capacity of development.
Following the troops was a supply-train of thirty-three wagons. When the command reached the place known as Old Fortification Camp, Company E of the Fourth Infantry, with Lieutenant Price in command, was dropped from the command, the design of this step being to afford protection to passing supply-trains, and to act as a reserve in case there was demand for it.
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