In February we were moved to near Fort Lyon, below Alexandria, and placed in General Jameson's brigade, from which time until nearly the last of August, the military history is nearly identical with that of the other regiments of the same brigade and its medical history similar. They were the 63d and 105th Pennsylvania and the 87th New York Volunteers.
On the 17th of March we were shipped on board transports at Alexandria for Fortress Monroe, where we were landed at dark during a cold rain storm, to which the men were exposed during the night, in and by the roadside, without any protection whatever. The next day and night they were quartered in open horse sheds. Then for two weeks they were camped in open fields near Hampton, in shelter-tents, in the use of which the men were entirely unskilled, a matter of more moment than would at first appear. The result of the unusual exposure was the appearance of dysentery to considerable extent among the men, even at that early season.
On the 4th and 5th of April we were marched from Hampton to within three miles of Yorktown and confined for one week within short range of the rebel guns. A heavy rain flooded the tents for four days, during two of which neither officers nor men had anything to eat. The brigade was then moved back half a mile into the woods, to a spot in the immediate vicinity of several large marshes; in fact, the camp itself was little better than a swamp. For three weeks the men walked in mud, slept in mud, and drank water from holes scooped out in the mud. The combined remonstrance of the medical officers of the brigade, that a "month's continuance in that place would deprive the Government of the services of one-half the men and officers," was met by the silencing reply: "It is a military necessity."
The subsequent amount of sickness shows that our fears were well founded. The malaria imbibed in the marshes and swamps at Yorktown, together with the excessive amount of labor performed there, on picket and in the trenches, debilitated our men for months, putting dozens of them in their graves and rendered hundreds of them unfit for service for months, many of them for life.
We had one man killed by a shell and five wounded while before Yorktown, in the skirmish of the "peach orchard," and two by accident, one shot through the penis and scrotum, above the testicle, and behind the cord and thigh, by a small sized rifle bullet, recovered rapidly by simple dressing. One shot through the leg died afterwards in general hospital. Remainder slight wounds.