Army wagons and ambulances
were constantly passing in the street, all strange and novel at first
to the Mountain Boys but soon familiar. Drilling and guard duty
filled their days. Morning and afternoon they drilled, and the actual
possession of the enemies' country, the warlike aspect of everything
about them, made drilling a far more real and important matter than it
had seemed at home. Captain Conwell felt his responsibility and threw
himself into the work with an earnestness that infected his men. They
would rather drill with him two hours than with any other officer a
half hour. They not only caught the contagion of his enthusiasm, but
he changed the dull, monotonous drudgery of it, into real, fascinating
work by marching them into seemingly hopeless situations and then in
some unexpected and surprising way, extricating them. Nor did he
spare himself any of the unpleasant phases of the work. One day, the
Colonel, while drilling the regiment, noticed that many of the men of
Company F marched far out of their places to avoid a mudhole in the
road. He marched and countermarched them over the same ground to
compel the men to keep their rank and file regardless of the mud.
Captain Conwell saw his object, and himself plunged into the mire, his
men followed, and were thus saved the reprimand which threatened.

During these days, Captain Conwell kept up with the law studies
abandoned at Yale. Every spare minute, he devoted to his books and
committed to memory, one whole volume of Blackstone during the term of
his first enlistment Not many of the soldiers so used their hours
off duty. But it is this turning of every minute to account that has
enabled Dr. Conwell to accomplish so much. He has made his life count
for a half dozen of most person's by never wasting a moment.

The monotony of garrison duty was broken first by a small fight at
Batchelor's Creek, seven miles above Newbern, but only four companies
were engaged. The Mountain Boys saw the first blood spilled at
Kingston and gained there the first glimpse of the horrors of war.
Nearly the entire marching force was sent into the interior on this
expedition, known as the Goldsboro expedition, the object being to cut
the Weldon railroad at Goldsboro, North Carolina. It was a hard march
with short and uncertain halts and occasional cavalry skirmishes. At
Kingston, they met the enemy in force. The Confederates were massed
about the bridge over the Neuse river and held it b