This order was a good-natured forgery, of course. Nevertheless it was carried out to the letter. The fact is that we had no baggage and no baggage wagons. The only baggage wagons I ever heard of in connection with that campaign were a few that General D. H. Hill summoned for a special occasion. His musicians put in a petition at the beginning of the summer’s work for wagons to carry their instruments. He assented instantly, and ordered the wagons brought up. As soon as the instruments were comfortably deposited within them, he turned to his quartermaster and said: “Send those wagons to Richmond.” Then turning to his adjutant he said: “Have muskets issued to these men immediately.” General D. H. Hill was not a man from whose orders anybody under him was disposed to appeal. We entered that campaign stripped almost to the buff. We had no tents, even for the highest officers. We had no canteens. We had no haversacks. We had no knapsacks. We had no oilcloths to sleep on. We had no tin cups. We had almost no cooking utensils and almost no blankets. We had no shoes, and our socks had long ago been worn out. We had an average of one overcoat to every thousand men. It was in this condition of destitution that we entered the battles in the Wilderness. The Federal army was as much oversupplied as we were underfurnished with all the necessaries of campaigning. What with a perfectly equipped quartermaster’s department, a sanitary commission volunteering superfluous tin cups and everything else and with other sources of lavish supply, public and private, every Federal soldier entered the campaign carrying about three times as much as any soldier should carry. The moment there was fighting to be done, they shed all these things--as a man throws off his overcoat when there is work to do. In the shiftings and changes of position that occurred during that most irregular of all possible contests, we were thrown often into positions where the shedding had been done. The first thought of every man of us was to equip himself with such necessaries as were lying about. It took us a week to get rid of the superfluous plunder, and reduce ourselves again to the condition of soldiers in light marching order. The one worst lack of all we could not supply in this way. That was the lack of food. It was an army of starving men that fought those battles in the Wilderness. It was an army of starving men that confronted Grant at Spottsylvania. It was an army of starving men that faced the guns at Cold Harbor, at Bottom’s bridge, and all the way to Petersburg. Not until we were established in the works there, did any man have enough food in a week to supply his physical needs for a day. I have elsewhere in these stories illustrated this fact somewhat, but as it was the central fact in connection with that campaign, it seems to me important here to state it in its fulness.