l Ransom's
headquarters for special duty, and met a force of several others from
brigade. We were taken in command by Lieut. A. Clate Sharp, of
Forty-ninth, to boat wood down the river and canal for the men in the
trenches. We were soon comfortably quartered at our wagon yard. Here we
went seven miles up the canal and two miles up the river into another
canal, where we got the wood. This was a real picnic all the time. With
three men to the boat, we would bring down four cords of wood on a boat.
While out there I would often see General Lee, nearly always by himself,
riding around leisurely. I got rations from home and fared sumptuously,
while the poor fellows in the ditches were having it rough. They were now
trimmed out to one man to the yard. About the first of March about a dozen
of Company F concluded they had enough of it, and all started for home,
taking their guns with them. They had gotten information from me that
there were no guards next to the river, and succeeded in getting through.
I will not name them here. They nearly all had been good and faithful
soldiers who had borne more hardships than I. They had been in those bleak
and bloody trenches for nearly nine months. The annual spring campaign was
coming on, and every private knew that resistance could not much longer be
sustained. On the 15th of March my detail ended, and we were relieved from
the ditches and went to Hotches Run, ten miles away.

Grant was pressing Lee's right, and about 3 a. m. on March 25th, Lee
attacked Grant in front of our old position next to the river and carried
it with little or no loss. We went in to hold it, and after day they
attacked us with a heavy force, and holding the lines on both our flanks,
after two hours of hard fighting, turned our right flank and compelled our
right to fall back or surrender. The enemy held a fort close on our left,
and when they came swarming over the hill on our right and pressing our
front we had to surrender with two thousand on that end of the line. All
of Company F that were together, thirty-four in all, including Captain and
Lieutenant Grigg, Lieutenant Dr. V. J. Palmer, had been in front of our
line, and seeing the predicament, slipped out and escaped without coming
back through the company. George Thompson was mortally wounded. This was
the last of Company F, except five or six rallied by Lieutenant Palmer.
The spring before we started out with one hundred, this spring we had
forty men in l