At Harrison's Landing our regiment was encamped on the left of the
line, close to the river. There was but one alarm here, that of the
morning of August 1, when the enemy ran some light guns to the opposite
bank of the James and opened fire on the landing. For about thirty
minutes there was a lively exchange of shot and shell between their
battery and our gunboats, when the enemy fell back, and troubled us no
more.
Here we remained until the middle of August, our life a monotony of
picket duty in an open field, baking, sweltering under a hot sun, with
only such shelter as kennels made of sticks and wheat straw afforded.
In camp, a well shaded one fortunately, we lazily slept the time away,
drilling occasionally, but not often, though when General Emory took
command of our brigade here, General Naglee going north on leave, he
established a series of brigade drills, the chief amusement in which,
to the rank and file, was to see the commanders of the different
regiments gallop up to the General after each awkward movement to
receive the maledictory criticisms of that outraged old cavalry warrior
on their evident ignorance of what to him was as familiar as winking.
They passed his encomiums along to their line officers on returning to
their regiments you may be sure, and the line officers took it out of
their "non coms," who cursed the men for their stupidity, who damned
the man who invented tactics and themselves for having been such fools
as to enlist for soldiers with which officers could play shuttlecock
and battledore.
Finally, the preparations for the evacuation of the Landing being
completed, we of Keyes' Corps moved away from it the 16th of August.
The 17th we crossed the Chickahominy near the mouth of the James,
crossing on a ponton bridge of two thousand feet in length, reached
Williamsburg the 18th, went into camp about where we did when there in
May, marching to Yorktown the 20th.