March 14—This morning, at daybreak, cannonading was heard by us from General Pettigrew’s line, which is on our left flank. We immediately fell into line of battle, our artillery opened fire, then we infantry advanced our line on the Yankees. We halted in an old field and had for a breastwork a rail fence. We fought for four hours—hot at times. We had a number killed and wounded. The enemy fell back on their stronghold—Newbern. This battle is called the Battle of Deep Gully, as it was fought on that stream. We then took up our march again for Kinston. We got eleven miles and halted for the night. Our company was the rear guard of the brigade.
Diary of a Tar Heel Confederate Soldier By Louis Léon [53d North Carolina Regiment, infantry]
March 13—Resumed our march at 8 this morning, got eight miles, when we got to our extreme picket posts. They told us the Yankees were one mile and a quarter from us. Then we marched half a mile further, when our artillery commenced the fight. It kept on all day, but very light. We drove in their pickets and advanced our line until dark. We are eight miles from Newbern—marched eleven miles.
March 12—We have had orders several times for the last six days to march, and a part of our brigade has had a fight. But this morning we took up our march at 5 o’clock. I saw Gen. D. H. Hill on the road and spoke to him, as well as his adjutant. They are friends from home and comrades of our first North Carolina regiment. We marched twenty miles and halted for the night—laid in line of battle all night with arms by our side.
March 6—Several of us out of our company went to Kinston and the battlefield. The Yankees are very poorly buried, as we saw several heads, hands and feet sticking out of the ground, where the rain had washed the dirt off of them.
March 5—Up to to-day there is nothing worth recording, although we are getting black as negroes on account of our burning green pine.
February 26—Two men out of our regiment were whipped for desertion. They were undressed all but pants and shoes, tied to a post, and each given thirty-nine lashes on their bare backs. The balance of this month nothing new, only very cold.
February 25—Henry Wortheim was sent home on a sick furlough, as he is very bad off.
February 13—Nothing new. We have been fixing our camps. Our company has built log huts, from two to three feet high, and then put our tents over them—building a chimney to each hut or tent, and we are very comfortable. We got orders to cook two days’ rations, and be ready to march in two hours, but did not have to go—in fact, nothing new until the 25th.
February 9—We established a regular camp here. This last march has been a very hard one, and only a distance of thirty miles. But it took us from Wednesday to Saturday, through snow, rain and mud ankle-deep and without rations. Kinston is a perfect ruin, as the Yankees have destroyed everything they could barely touch, but it must at one time have been a very pretty town—but now nothing scarcely but chimneys are left to show how the Yankees are trying to reconstruct the Union.
February 8—Wortheim and myself went uptown to get something to eat. We got corn bread and bacon. On our road back to camp we bought four more dodgers of corn bread and gave it to our mess companions who did not go uptown. Our regiment moved on the other side of town in an old pine thicket.
