With four officers and 112 men the division swung out from the armory on the evening of the 29th and amid red fire and with a band blaring at the front paraded to the railroad station, envied by infantrymen who could not obtain opportunity to march in the mammoth procession. At 11 o’clock the company marched into the Second Regiment Armory in New Haven, stacked arms and was dismissed for a midnight lunch, at which the men stowed away steaming coffee and ham sandwiches and received strict orders not to leave the building. Then they made living pillows of one another and slumbered innocently on benches in the gallery till some wee, sma’ hour or other in the morning, when the Second Regiment crashed out with “Onward Christian Soldiers,” and summoned them back to the world of consciousness and sin. At 3 o’clock they fell in and marched out into a hospitable rain punctuated by milkmen and policemen. Three-quarters of an hour later they boarded the side-wheeler Shinnecock. At 4 o’clock the steamer got under way and the men began to look forward to a night of rest. One man slept on his arm under a table in the dining saloon piled six feet high with camp chairs. Another was lost to the world under the break of the pilot house. Still another slept on unbaled hay for the field officers of the Second Regiment. Some slumbered in gangways and some on the paddle boxes. The mathematical boys of the division demonstrated the problem that it was possible to sleep anywhere in space.
Somewhere in the head of the Sound the Shinnecock fell on an evil time. A bushing on a feathering paddle blade in the starboard wheel misbehaved and a bar buckled and for three hours she drifted while engineers made repairs. Finally an emergency landing was made in a convenient coal yard in Port Morris and the battalion trotted at double time for two miles over Harlem cobblestones, arriving just in time to fall in ahead of General Oliver O. Howard and the Grand Army Division.
During the march the men had a coveted opportunity to view the one-armed corps commander at close range. Much of the time the old hero was obliged to ride with his bridle rein in his teeth and with his chapeau in his hand in response to the frantic waves of applause which greeted him. The occupants of the closely packed stands along the line of march rose in wildly cheering masses as they caught sight of the grizzled veteran and the men of the Grand Army of the Republic.