Diary of Corporal Lawrence Van Alstyne: Saturday, October 4, 1862

Battalion-drill again. Learning to be a soldier is hard work. There has been no rain lately and the sun has dried up everything. There are no green fields here as we have at home. The ground is sandy, and where there is grass, it is only a single stem in a place, with bare ground all round it. So many feet tread it all to dust, which the wind blows all over us, but mostly in our faces and eyes. The road past our camp is a mire of the finest dust, and as hard to travel through as so much mud. We eat it with our rations, and breathe it all the day long. It covers everything, in our tents as well as outside. Our clean new tents are already taking on the universal muddy, red color of everything in sight. The only good thing about it is, it serves every one alike, piling upon the officers just as it does on the men. We are getting to feel quite proud of ourselves as soldiers. We learn fast under the teaching of Colonel Smith. The 135th N. Y. and a Mass. regiment are with us on battalion-drill and sometimes several other regiments, so that we about cover the large plain out near the bay. We get tougher and harder every day. The fodder we so often find fault with, and the hard work we are doing, is making us hard, like the work and the fare is.

SOURCE:  Lawrence Van Alstyne, Diary of an Enlisted Man, p. 44

Diary of Corporal Lawrence Van Alstyne, Wednesday, September 24, 1862

New tents were given us to-day. "A" tents they are called; I suppose because they are in the shape of a letter A. They are like the roof of a house cut off at the eaves, and one gable split open for us to enter, with strings sewed fast to one side and buttonholes in the other so we can close them up tight. A detail from each company has been clearing up the ground and laying out for an all winter stay. The officers have moved back to the more level portion of the field, which brings our lines of tents on much better ground than before. A long and wide street has been laid out and is being graded off, on the west side of which the officers' tents are ranged, the colonel's tent in the middle and a little in the rear of the tents of the captains and lieutenants, which are directly in front of their respective companies. On a line with Colonel Cowles' tent are those of the lieutenant colonel (which by the way has no occupant yet, he being off somewhere on detached service), the major, quartermaster, adjutant, surgeon and chaplain. Back of these is a big tent called the Hospital, which so far has not been of much use. Then in front of all these are the companies' quarters, the ten company streets running off at right angles to the broad street along which the company officers' tents are now being placed. A wide space is left in front of Colonel Cowles' tent, and runs clear through camp, nothing being on it but a flag-pole, which is to stand directly in front of the colonel's tent and in line with the tents of the company officers. So many hands make light work of any job, but I am only telling how it is to be, for only the laying out is completed and the grading begun.

We that were not detailed for the work were taken out to the great sandy plain toward what I am told is Chesapeake Bay and given a lesson in battalion-drill.

The 135th N. Y. was with us, and from the crowds of people who were there I suppose battalion drill is something worth seeing. But it was anything but fun for us, and we came back to camp hungry, tired, and with as much dust on us as would stick. We were glad enough to crawl into our old shelter tents. It is well I wrote the most of the day's doings before we went out, for it is hard work to put this little finish to it. Good-night, diary.

SOURCE:  Lawrence Van Alstyne, Diary of an Enlisted Man, p. 37-8