In the Woods before Great Bethel,
Saturday, March 29, 1862.
Dear Sister L.:—
I had to stop right there and report to the general with my bugle, to teach me new calls. We have received no mail since we left Alexandria and none has been sent further than the Fortress. I don’t know when you will get this, but I will write and perhaps they will send it some time or other. My last stamp got wet and spoiled, but D. gave me a stamped envelope, one of the last he had, so I am all right yet. He is just one of the best fellows that ever lived.
On Thursday General Porter’s division made a reconnoissance two miles beyond Great Bethel. Our brigade with a battery took the lead. It is ten miles from here to the fortifications. The road is perfectly level and sandy all the way. The two regiments of Berdan’s sharpshooters are in our division now and a company of them went with us as skirmishers. A spy had reported the rebels two thousand strong at the forts. These are a line of earthworks in the edge of a pine woods. In front of these is a large level field or two or three hundred acres, and in front of the field an extensive swamp full of wet holes, thickets, briars and vines. The road leads through the middle of this swamp to the field. Here was the place where so many of our brave boys fell last spring. We halted as we came up to the swamp. The colonel came along and told us to watch the colors and stick to them, that Great Bethel would be ours before night. We then commenced to move. The artillery took the road, the Seventeenth and Twelfth New York the swamp on the right, and the Forty-fourth and Eighty-third the left. We had just entered and were forcing our way through when we heard the crack of rifles in the woods ahead. The word was passed along to hurry up. I thought the ball had opened at last. You ought to have seen us go through those thickets then. Pell-mell we went, over bogs and through vines and places I never would have thought a man could get through under ordinary circumstances. As we came out to the field the firing ceased. We formed in line of battle instantly and moved toward the works. I expected to see a line of fire run along their breastworks, but not a sound came from them and not a man could we see. We came up to the front and our color guard leaped the ditch and planted the flag of the Eighty-third on the fortifications so long disgraced by the rebel rag. Great Bethel was ours and not a man hurt. They had pickets there who exchanged shots with our skirmishers as they came in sight and then retreated. We then turned to the left and went about two miles to another fortification. They had a dam here to fill a ditch in front of the works, and below the dam a bridge. As our skirmishers came out of the woods they saw three men tearing up the planks on this bridge. They fired and shot two of them. Some others ran out of the woods and carried them off, so we don’t know whether they were killed or not. The main body of rebels had left in the morning. They have gone to Yorktown. We have orders to have three days’ cooked rations on hand, so I think we shall be after them soon. When we came back we burned all the log barracks and brush houses at the forts. All the houses here are burned and the whole country is a desert. It is one of the most beautiful sections, naturally, I have ever seen. The soil is very rich and the surface perfectly level. The corn fields have only one stalk in a place, showing that it must grow very large.
We have been resting since Thursday night. We don’t drill as much as we did at Hall’s Hill.
