Historic leaves, volume 6, April, 1907 - January, 1908

December 21 found us at Poolsville again, where we went into winter quarters. The night of our arrival was a very cold one, so cold that the water which spilled from our canteens would freeze on our clothing. This was a hard march, and many of the boys fell out by the way. Three hundred or four hundred of us were packed away in a small schoolhouse, ‘thick as sardines.’ The next morning some of the party got over into the town and visited the grocery stores there.

That winter we were quartered in large, circular tents, called Sibley tents, which were pitched each on the top of a low stockade, that made the wall of the tent. We never saw this kind of tent after that winter. The next year each soldier was supplied with a strip of canvas five and one-half feet long, which when set up was called a shelter tent.

Nothing of importance happened while we were at Poolsville. We spent the time drilling and doing picket duty, and finally, April 15, 1863, broke camp and marched for Washington in a heavy rain. The first night we camped in some woods; the next found us three miles from Georgetown, where we were quartered in some college buildings. On April 17 we went into quarters in Washington, at Martindale barracks, corner of Pennsylvania avenue and Twenty-third street. Here our regiment remained on provost guard duty until

July 9. Once in June we were ordered out at night, with one hundred rounds of cartridges, to Chain Bridge, as a rebel raid was expected there. Our company was the advance guard of the regiment. At noon the next day we were marched back to the capital.

July 9. The Thirty-fourth and Thirty-ninth Massachusetts regiments took train at 10 a. m. for Harper's Ferry, sixty miles away. This, it will be remembered, was immediately after the battle of Gettysburg. No change had taken place in our company, except that Lieutenant J. J. Giles was left in Washington on detached duty at the provost-marshal's office.