April 18 — This morning we went a little below Sparta, took a position, and waited for the advancing foe. About midday we saw a Yankee battery go in position on a hill west of the pike and about two miles distant from us. It was too far away for us to do any effective execution by firing on it, consequently we slowly retired from our position. Just after we started to retire a shell from the Yankee battery, nearly spent and almost as noiseless as a bird, flew over our heads and harmlessly dropped in a field, not more than thirty feet from us.
The rear guard duty we are doing now does not require us to fight the whole Yankee army, nor even their vanguard unless they press Jackson’s rear on his retreat, and as I have not seen a live sign of Jackson’s rear for a week, we allow the Yanks to advance almost undisputedly as long as they do it slowly and decently, without in any way interfering or intermeddling with Jackson’s movements.
After we left our first position we moved leisurely up the pike to Harrisonburg, which is sixty-seven miles from Winchester. There we turned east and moved down the Standardsville road five miles, where we are camped this evening.
