On March 22 our Division left Winchester to proceed, as we believed, to Manassas Junction. At the end of a two days' march we were camping for the night about three miles east of Snicker's Gap, in the Blue Ridge. Rumors here began to circulate, that there had in our absence been considerable fighting at Winchester. It was reported that the Confederates had been defeated, but that General Shields had been wounded in the battle. We were not, therefore, surprised, the next morning, to be ordered to march back over the identical road upon which we had come. We reached Winchester the same night after a hard march of twenty-five miles, and learned from its citizens that there certainly had been a fight. We were informed that General Jackson had learned of our departure from Winchester, but had not heard that Shields was still encamped north of the city. Jackson had made a hasty move to recapture Winchester, but had been confronted by Shields near Kernstown. Here the Confederates had been completely routed and driven beyond Strasburgh, with heavy loss in killed and prisoners.
On the morning after our arrival at Winchester, I went out to take a view of the battle-field, and was able to gain some idea of what the future held in store for us. The wounded had already been cared for, and some of the dead had been buried; but sixteen of our dead remained on the field, and something over three hundred of the enemy's. In one part of the battle-ground, covered with small timber and underbrush, where the enemy had for a time made a stubborn resistance, scarcely a bush or a tree but showed the marks of bullets at a height of from three to six feet from the ground. In my inexperience, I then wondered how any man could have lived in that thicket; and in truth, not many did live there long, for the ground was strewn with the dead.
Returning to camp at noon, I found that we were again under orders to march. We started out near sundown, moving that night to Strasburgh, and found the bridge over Cedar Creek, two miles this side of Strasburgh, destroyed. It had been burned by Jackson at the time of his first retreat from Winchester. This precaution had in the recent fight proved to be his undoing, for in his hasty flight before Shield's Division, his army, which up to that place had preserved good order, was completely disorganized and suffered a loss of two hundred prisoners.