The Portland Daily Press

The rations lost by so narrow a margin before crossing the river were issued on the field in the night, forty-eight hours after they were due. The rough experiences of those days and nights had developed an inexhaustible supply of pluck and a cheerful habit of meeting hardship and privation with contemptuous derision. Yet it was a pathetic scene when the famished men loosened the waistbelts—which had been their chief physical sustenance while standing where thunder carried a bolt with every crash and rain touched living bodies with a crimson stain—and proceeded to garnish their feast of uncooked pork and hard bread with a salad of "heart-easing mirth" and grim repartee.

The regiment remained under the enemy's guns still another day, and then with the entire army recrossed the river at dead of night carrying a vivid appreciation of the high exaltations and depressing horrors of a battlefield. And as it pressed up the Stafford Hills in falling rain, making way for the living comrades who came behind, the wayside pines were chanting dirges for those who did not return.