by John Beauchamp Jones
JUNE 8TH—Clouds and sunshine—cool.
No war news except what appears in the papers.
There was a rumor yesterday that several of the companies of the Departmental Battalion were captured on Monday, but it was not confirmed by later accounts.
Our battery of 49 guns was unmasked, and opened on the enemy, who had been firing over the heads of our young men (clerks). This was replied to by as many guns from the enemy. Thus both fires were over the heads of the infantry in the low ground between, and none were hurt, although the shell sometimes burst just over them.
A pontoon train passed down the river to-day, on this side, one captured from the United States, and brought from Gordonsville. If Grant crosses, Lee will cross, still holding the “inside track.”
Received a letter from Custis. He is at Gen. Custis Lee’s headquarters on ordnance duty. A pretty position, if a shell were to explode among the ammunition! He says he has plenty of bread and meat, and so we need not send any more. But he considers it a horrible life, and would rather be without his rations than his daily reading, etc. So I sent him reading enough for a week—all the newspapers I had; a pamphlet on the Bible Society in the South ; Report of the Judiciary Committee on the Suspension of the habeas corpus; and, finally, the last number of the Surgical Magazine, in which he will find every variety of gunshot wounds, operations, etc. etc. I had nothing else to send him.
