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.

‘ [29] water.’ After each one had partaken a taste of this specific preventive of chills and fever, and we had again assembled in line, the officer of the day informed us that three of the tents that had been used by the non-commissioned staff and for a guard house, or perhaps one of them for officers' quarters, had been assigned to us; so, procuring some straw in the vicinity, the hundred and fifty men, more or less, minus the guard which had been detailed, were billeted in these somewhat close quarters; but they lay snug and warm, if somewhat cramped, the various reliefs crawling out of the different masses of humanity as the corporal's lantern was flashed in their faces at different stated times during the night. We melted a goodly patch of snow, here and there, that night, with the bonfires which we kept burning; but one's back would chill, while his legs and chest were perspiring, as he stood beside the blaze.

In the afternoon on the following day we forded Broad Run and were nearing Bristow station, when in obedience to orders we countermarched, returned to the north side of the river, and marched at as good pace as the condition of the fields permitted, toward Manassas. One says, ‘We are going to join McClellan before Yorktown.’ Two days later, we were near Cloud's Mills and approaching Alexandria.

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