Soon after he came to the regiment and was placed in the same company with me, I was detailed to go on picket duty. Very shortly thereafter I became injured while assisting in the building of rifle pits at night and was sent from our headquarters to Washington. I had previous to this been through all of the engagements from the Antietam war, where we first found the regiment. I had participated in all of the engagements, such as the first and second Fredericksburg battles and the Chancellorsville battle, or “Stick in the Mud,” and the Culpepper battle and Mine Run, and at this place it certainly did seem as though we run, for we retreated clear beyond Manassas Junction, in the direction of Washington, and we could not stop long enough to steep our coffee without getting shelled from the rebel batteries. For six miles, on what was called the stone pike, we double marched, and it did seem as though the rebels were destined to lick us every time we met them. I had, up to the time of my brother’s coming into the army, participated in all of the engagements that our regiment had been called into. There is one thing that I recall to memory very distinctly. It is the incident of our camping on the battle field of Bull Run, on our retreat from Mine Run, near the Rapidan River. Near this run the rebels had very strong fortifications thrown up. Now on the battle field of Bull Run our dead had just been covered—a great many by the enemy—on top of the ground, and so shallow that the bones of thousands of the dead, skulls and all others, lay on top of the ground. Oh, how sad it did seem to wake in the morning to find the country strewn with human bones for miles around, and it is one thing that I can’t forget very soon. I had gone over the ground in the direction of Bull Run, and very close to the run, studded with trees, sat the skeleton of one of our Indiana men against a large elm tree, just as he had died one year before. I called the attention of the officers to this spectacle. The skeleton was in a sitting posture, the flesh having entirely disappeared, and on the ground lay his blue clothes. On the arms of the clothes were the emblems showing the sergeant’s stripes and the number of his company and regiment. One of the officers just touched his sabre under the chin of this skeleton and it fell all to pieces. I thought this a wonderful sight.