John D. Billings, The history of the Tenth Massachusetts battery of light artillery in the war of the rebellion

Now a season of comparative inactivity set in and continued for some weeks. Not that we were enjoying a state of absolute rest, for we were kept moving from point to point, but there was no fighting going on in this interval. There was, however, a long list of casualties reported every day at corps headquarters, for the pickets were most inimical to each other, and hundreds of lives were thrown away in this branch of warfare that might have better served their country's cause.

The season was an unusually dry one, and the slightest movements were attended with considerable bodily discomfort, for by the continuous passage of troops, animals, and army transportation in general, the surface of the ground had been pulverized into such an impalpable powder that a newspaper correspondent, writing home at this time, stated, with not much exaggeration, that whenever a grasshopper hopped it raised such a cloud of dust, the lookouts of the enemy immediately reported our army to be on the move. No rain had fallen for several weeks, and moving columns were enshrouded in dust. It settled on everything alike. Trees and shrubs were coated with it, making the aspect of nature dreary indeed. Men were absolutely unrecognizable who had marched a mile. The air seemed freighted with it, and breathing under these conditions was uncomfortable. Water became scarce. Soldiers would scoop out small holes in old watercourses, and patiently await a warm milky-colored fluid to ooze from the clay drop by drop. Hundreds wandered through the woods with their empty canteens, and could barely find water enough to quench thirst, to say nothing of getting a supply for coffee. The horses were ridden two miles to slake their thirst with warm, muddy, stagnant