Saturday, May 21st.
We broke camp list night and marched all night with the Fifth Corps batteries of Artillery, Co. H in the lead, passing through Guinia’s Station to-day, crossing the Mattapony River at Downer’s bridge and halting near a house in a cornfield. The men were thoroughly tired out and as hungry as bears, having had nothing to eat on the long march of twenty-five miles. While on the march I observed some horsemen in the distance, flitting about in the woods to our left and front, and suspecting that they might belong to the enemy, I halted the column and sent Corporal Richard E. Rhodes forward to reconnoiter. Rhodes was a splendid, plucky little fellow, and as he went straight for the woods I stood watching him with a good deal of anxiety, having prepared to throw the company into line and follow him in case of any hostile demonstration. Scarcely had he covered two-thirds of the distance when a single horseman rode out to meet him, and in a few moments he rejoined us and reported that the men we had seen belonged to a detachment of our own cavalry, sent out, without notice to us, to picket our line of march. Starting on again with lighter hearts if not more elastic steps, we reached the cornfield, stacked arms and lay down among the little corn-hills to rest.
