A. J. Bennett, private , First Massachusetts Light Battery, The story of the First Massachusetts Light Battery , attached to the Sixth Army Corps : glance at events in the armies of the Potomac and Shenandoah, from the summer of 1861 to the autumn of 1864.

After soft-tack and coffee, on the morning of the 8th, being yet in Martinsburg, we learned that there was no available means of transporting the company to Baltimore. Our coaches would be freight cars, when there should be any empty. So we lingered here till near night, when through our captain's efforts, the post-quartermaster promised us some cars, provided we would unload them. This we proceeded to do with alacrity; then the quartermaster said, if we were so anxious to depart that we were willing to perform this labor, he would find us some cars without imposing the task. This was queer, but cars were pointed out to us, and by lamplight we were steaming over the Baltimore and Ohio.

The old baggage car rang the night long with army songs. No one was disposed to sleep, no one, we believe, had slept when the frosty morning found us on a side track perhaps fifty miles from Baltimore. We remember of accepting an invitation to drink a cup of coffee, and eat some boiled cabbage and brown bread, hospitably offered by a section hand in a cot near the track whereon the train halted. It was Sunday morning, and the good man was breakfasting at his leisure. We made sundry halts of greater or less length during the day, so that it was evening when we entered the station at Baltimore. We passed the night at the Soldiers' Rest, where were many wounded soldiers who were perhaps at such a stage of convalescence as permitted of their going home a short time to recuperate. We departed betimes on the morrow for Philadelphia, crossing the Susquehanna at Havre de Grace in the same huge railroad ferry-boat that brought us over from Port Deposit in 1861.

At Wilmington, certain signs of lively festivity attracted our attention from the car windows, and some of the boys who were engaged in the affair told our captain, who inquired from his seat as to the nature of the demonstrations, that it was a McClellan jubilee.

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There was a delay of several hours in Philadelphia, during which the boys wandered at will in the town, the captain giving the passes to Sergeant——, that we might be able to get conveyance at the appointed time in case our commander should be longer detained. But when we were in waiting a moment