Long, monotonous days of garrison duty followed for the men, days of drilling, of idling up and down the streets of the dull Southern town. But Captain Conwell used his spare minutes to advantage, and when no work connected with his company or the personal welfare of his comrades occupied him, he was studying. Then came the order to drive the Confederates from a fort they were erecting on the Newbern Railroad about thirty miles inland. This expedition, known as the Gum Swamp Expedition, was an experience that tested the mettle of the men and the resources of the young captain, and an experience none of the survivors ever forgot. It was a forced march, a quick charge. The Confederates fled leaving their fort unfinished. The Union men having successfully completed their work, began the return to Newberne, and here disaster overtook them. The Confederates hung on their rear, riddling their ranks with shot and shell. Suffering, maddened, with no way to turn and fight, for the enemy kept themselves well hidden, with no way of escape ahead if they remained on the road, they plunged into the swamp, that swept up black and dismal to the very edge of the highway. The Confederate prisoners with them, warned them of their danger, but the men were not to be stayed when a deadly rain of the enemy's balls was thinning their ranks every minute. The swamp was one black ooze with water up to their waists, a tangle of grass, reeds, cypress trees, bushes. Loaded down with their heavy clothing, and their army accoutrements, one after another the men sank from sheer exhaustion. No man could succor his brother. It was all he could do to drag himself through the mire that sucked him down like some terrible, silent monster of the black, slimy depths. But Captain Conwell would not desert a man. He could not see his comrades left to die before his very eyes, those men who came right from his own mountain town, his own boy friends, the ones who had enlisted under him, marched and drilled with him. Rather would he perish in the swamp with them. He worked like a Hercules, encouraging, helping, carrying some of the more exhausted. A wet, straggling remnant reached Newberne. Even then, when Captain Conwell found that two of his own company were missing, he plunged back into the swamp to rescue them. Hours passed, and just as a relief expedition was starting to search for him, he came back, his hat gone, his uniform torn into rags, but with one of the men with him and the other left on a fallen tree with a path blazed to lead the rescuers to him. No heart could withstand such devotion as that. Young and old, it touched his men so deeply, they could not speak of it unmoved. They would gladly have died for him if need be, as one did later, changing by his heroic act the whole current of Russell Conwell's life.