From this camp I went home on a short visit, and while I stayed at home with the mumps, which I had several chances to catch, came out on me, though very slightly, and I soon got perfectly well, and after staying home about 3 weeks I started back to camp, but while I had been away the Regiment had been ordered away from Camp Lee and had moved to Johns Island and camped at a plantation on the island, and named the camp Camp Craft, from its owner. They stayed here only a few days and moved lower down on the island to Camp Craft No. 2. Our Company was sent out on picket to Rockville, but nothing as I understand of importance occurred. The Regiments afterwards moved to Curtis Plantation, and named this camp, one at which we remained a long time, Camp Fellow. It was here that I joined the Regiment, and came up with my company. We were encamped here for about two months, and numerous little instances, marches, pickets, forages, etc. occurred here, which I will relate in turn as they occurred.
Our camp was in an open old field, the largest I’ve seen on the island, very level, and excellent for drilling. We spent our time in various ways, walking over the island, viewing the different beautiful residences and the unfragrant scenery of a lowland swamp, fishing in the creeks, hunting, playing ball, and hunting something to eat. The first two days or so we spent in fixing up our camp, making rude benches and tables, putting straw in our tents to sleep on. After getting fixed up I began to wander about the island, in the swamps, looking at the various kinds of vegetation on the lookout for some animal worth shooting with my pistol which I generally carried with me, and hunting for magnolias and such things as I know would be prized at home, some of which I sent home, I went about to several of the nearest houses, deserted by their owners on account of the Yankee’s proximity. In several of theses houses, there was great deal of furniture, some of it costly, such as beds, bureaus, sofas, and sometimes pianos, etc. of which a great deal had been destroyed by some ruthless hand, a great many old books and such things as was needed in camp, when we found them we did not scruple to take. We spent a great deal of our time in camp making kettle rings, out of cow and deer horn and beef bones, some of these were very beautiful, and of superior workmanship. I went out several times on little fishing excursions with my Uncle Avery, but generally failed to catch anything else but crabs and eels, but I saw some negroes that understood the art bringing up buckets full of fish and crabs and shrimps. I took great interest in going out in little boats with these boys and watching them fishing. We lived mostly on sweet potatoes, of which any quantity could be found, of superior quality. I went out with the wagons several times after them, getting the wagons loaded and then looking about the garden and premises for something further in the eating line, such as a stray sheep, and very often we went cow hunting, that is, some of us would be sent out on the island to kill beeves for the regiment, plenty of which were to be found stray and almost wild on the island. One day W. Dunovant, myself and several others were sent out to kill them. We went about 4 miles from camp over on Wadmalaw Island. We soon came across a small drove, and encircling them fired into them, each one of us dropping one. Then came the work of skinning them. I assure you it is no fun for we tugged and worked for an hour or so, but we soon got used to such work, and was generally glad to get a chance to skin them, in anticipation of a good meal. Very often we were sent out foraging on the different plantations and islands around us, sometimes bringing fodder and hay for the horses, sometimes potatoes for ourselves. I was always glad to go on theses expeditions, as I got a view of the country, and generally got something extra to eat for my own mess, such as sheep, duck, etc. Besides these, in some manner pleasant employment. We very often had to go on expeditions just the contrary. After we had stayed on the island a short time, we were put to work building a road across the marsh and then a bridge over the Stone River, at Church Flats, to the mainland. A detail of men from each company was sent every day to work on them. Our times came ‘round quite often, and we would either have to cut wood or brush, or dig up dirt, or some other hard labor, this was very tedious and very dirty work. We were continually in the mud, on some of these expeditions we would sometimes come across a bee hive, or a stray sheep, or some other thing. One day I got a large Muscovy duck which I represented as being wild.
As these were our every day employment, we had our fun at night, when not on guard. We had an over plus of fiddlers in the Regiment and every night a ring was soon formed and a nimble negro in the middle, we had dancing, far superior to the cramped steps of a fashionable ball. But when the guard turn comes, then our amusement stops for a while, and the stern duty of a soldier, tramping his lonely path, thinking of the dear one at home, usurps for a while the jovial mood. As he walks along his lonely post, liable at any moment to be ushered into the presence of an offended God, by the hand of the unseen foe, listening to the mad howl of the world, the hoarse croak of the frog and the shrill cry of the never tiring whippoorwill, his comrades wrapped in a slumber so coveted by him, tis then he thinks of war, and its horrors, of duty and its rewards, of disgrace and its consequences, and then the loved forms of dear ones at home, flits across his mind, he views them in his imagination, sitting before the glowing fire of a peaceful home, talking of him so long absent, and then it is that sweet recollections of the past present themselves, to sooth as it were, his troubled feelings. But hark! the fierce cry of the sentinel’s halt again wakens him to a sense of duty, and such duty as a struggling country demands of her sons, fighting battles of freedom.