eather had
been intensely hot before the fighting began for several days. Many of our
men were on the sick list. On the 25th inst. the long roll was sounded;
our troops, the Thirty-seventh Regiment, was hastily formed in line.
Confederate battle-flags were here first displayed; stretchers for bearing
off the wounded were here first put in charge of the ambulance corps.
Everything wore a death-like hue. John Bell, a member of my company, said
he was not able for the march, was sick; I spoke to the surgeon, and told
him I would take Bell's word for anything. He said, "Leave him behind." In
a week he was dead. Another fellow asked me to intercede for him, that he
was sick. I told him I knew Bell, but I could not vouch for him; when
night came he deserted, and is living yet. This was as we were leaving
camp at Brock Church, six miles north of Richmond. We camped near Meadow
Bridge. On the 28th we moved slowly down the Chickahominy; got on the edge
of the road to let a body of Yankee prisoners pass; one of our men asked
them where they were going; an Irishman answered, 'In faith, I am going to
Richmond, where me wife has been telling me to go for the last two months,
and how far is it yit?'

"Late in the afternoon we heard heavy cannonading in our front, and we
pushed forward rapidly, bearing to the left, as we thought, to charge a
battery. Shells were passing through our line, killing seven men in one
company; when we got in thirty steps of the battery we were ordered to lay
down, to support the battery. The artillery duel ceased about 8 o'clock,
and remained quiet until 9 o'clock next morning, when it broke loose with
a vengeance and was quickly over. General Jackson had got in McClellan's
rear. Here the sun was terribly hot as we lay on the southern slope of the
hillside, with nothing to protect us from the vertical rays of the sun. We
went from here to Mechanicsville, where the heavy fighting was done the
evening before. Here the Yankee dead had not been moved, and the swarms
of horse-flies that arose from the dead carcasses rendered it necessary
for each man to hold one hand over his mouth and nose. It is impossible to
describe the scene as it was. In the afternoon of the 27th we reached
Gains' Mill; this battle opened about 3 p. m. It was terrific. North
Carolina's loss was very great. It was here that Colonel Campbell was
killed. Capt. Billy Kerr was desperately wounded. Many private soldiers
and company officers from