Near Yorktown, Va.,
Sunday, April 27, 1862.
Dear Sister L.:—
I have nothing more to do to-day, but it is not so with all the regiment. I can hear them calling the roll in some of the other companies, and one company just passed armed with “Irish spoons,” going out to work in the trenches. Six of our companies, including K, went out at daylight yesterday and worked all day in the rain. It was a very disagreeable day and we came back at night soaked through, cold and hungry, but as merry a lot of fellows as you ever saw. You won’t understand the thing very well unless I describe it particularly. I think I told you about there being a large field in front of the forts. A trench four feet deep and twelve feet wide and over a mile long is to be dug on this side of the field just in front of the woods. We followed a road up one of the ravines till we came to our pickets and then one by one crept cautiously up into the ditch. A ditch two or three feet deep and wide enough to walk in had been dug during the night and dirt thrown up in front so that by stooping down we were concealed. One thousand men filed in there the whole length of the ditch and then each one laying his gun on the bank within reach, commenced picking or shoveling the dirt up on to the bank. The rebel forts were in plain sight and their sharpshooters were within thirty rods of us, hidden in rifle pits, so that, if a fellow got his head above the bank, he might get a bullet in his cap. We soon got a bank high enough to stand up behind and then it would have done you good to see the dirt go out of that ditch. Many hands make light work, and I tell you our regiment and the Sixty-second handled a pile of dirt. We had two reliefs—I went in at 6 o’clock and worked till noon and then the other relief worked till night. Last night there were 10,000 men at work all night and as many more to-day, so you may guess there is something going on here. George says that when he gets ready, he will throw one hundred and thirty shells per minute into each of those forts. I think there will be lively dodging there if nobody is hurt. Oh, we are gaining on them slowly but surely.
When I was out on picket 1 cut a hickory stick that grew on Washington’s old breastwork. I picked up a sccesh bullet there too and brought them into camp. I thought I would make something out of them to remember Yorktown by, so I whittled out a tatting needle and made a rivet of the bullet and I send it to you. It is a poor thing I know, but the stick was green and I had nothing but a knife to make it with. After it gets seasoned you can get C. to smooth and polish it up, but I can’t get anything here to do it with.
There is not much firing lately and some deserters say that the rebels begin to think they will have to surrender at last. I guess they will think so when George gets ready to make them.
