Tuesday, July 26th.
The whole regiment was at work all day on the fortifications, and it looks as if the plan is to settle down to a regular siege. Already the earthworks on both sides form two or three lines and are very heavy, and at points the picket lines are hardly twenty yards apart. Frequently the pickets get very chummy, and I have heard that they sometimes have a game of cards with each other, though I have never seen it, but I do know that when the men seem to be getting familiar, orders will be issued by one side or the other to commence firing, and then we hear, “Get into your holes, Yanks,” or “Lie low, Johnnies, we’ve got orders to fire.” During the day I saw a man killed by a shell passing straight down the “covered way” some distance behind the works, and another killed by a mortar shell which went into the ground and exploded close by where he was sitting in one of the mortar battery forts.
