At the end of a week it became pretty evident that our stay at Brandy Station might be of considerable duration, possibly for the winter. Accordingly, the men proceeded once more to build houses for the winter; and never, since we had been in service, had they constructed so comfortable quarters as they now built. All about us were the rebel camps, in which they had vainly hoped to spend the winter; and these furnished timbers already hewn, fine stones ready for use in making chimneys, and hewn saplings ready prepared for bunks. The Sixth corps was encamped in a fine forest, which should have furnished not only great abundance of timber for use about the quarters, but for fuel for the winter; but owing to the wasteful manner in which the wood was at first used in building log fires in the open air, the forest melted away before the men had fairly concluded that there was any necessity for using it economically.
Preparations were hurried forward for another advance. The railroad, which had been destroyed by the rebels at the time of the raid to Centreville, from the Rappahannock to Bristoe Station, was to be rebuilt, and the bridge across the Rappahannock, which we had ourselves destroyed, was to be replaced, before the army could safely undertake another advance. It is one of the mysteries which people who have never been connected with a great army have greatest difficulty in comprehending, that an army advancing into such a country as we were now threatening, must have ample and easy communications with its base of supplies. Could such people for a moment realize the vast amount of material consumed by such an army as ours, the mystery might be solved. To attempt to advance into a desert country without first either providing a supply for many days, or opening ready communications with our base of supplies, would have been suicidal. General Sherman might lead his army through a fertile country, where the ravages of war had not appeared, and, by sweeping across a territory forty miles wide, collect abundant supplies for his men; but our army was now to march into a wilderness where even a regiment could not find subsistence. The newspapers at the north that condemned the delay at Brandy Station, and sneered at the idea that the army needed a base of supplies, simply exhibited their profound ignorance of the first principles of campaigning.