Friday, June 24th.
We finished the line of breastworks commenced last night and remained behind it all day. Private Lynch, my “body guard” already referred to, got possession of some “commissary” somewhere, and, as usual when such an opportunity offered, towards night got very drunk, and I sent Corporal O’Connor to trice him up by the thumbs. This is a mode of punishment quite familiar to Lynch, and is usually very effective in inducing early sobriety, but when the Corporal went to visit him a little after dark, he found that the inebriate had untied himself and disappeared, and a most careful search failed to find him anywhere in the camp. Sometime during the night Major Arthur came rushing out of his tent, shouting that the enemy was upon us, and ordering that the men be gotten into the breastworks as quickly as possible to repel a charge, but after waiting a little while and no enemy appearing, the truth leaked out and we returned to our blankets. It seems that Lynch, on releasing himself, was sobered up sufficiently to want to hide somewhere, so he went into the Major’s tent in that officer’s absence, and crept under his bunk, which was built in the usual way, of little parallel poles supported a foot or thereabouts above the ground by cross sticks held up by forked posts, and after the Major had turned in and gone to sleep, in attempting to turn over Lynch had suddenly lifted his superior officer and rolled him out of bed and so caused all the commotion.
