On Memorial day, thru the exigency of service conditions, the companies were moved and distributed along the coast at posts ranging from Portsmouth to New Bedford. Maj. Frye and the Cape companies remained at Warren. Lt. Col. Woodman with the 3d and 11th Companies garrisoned the fort at Clark’s Point, New Bedford, a work which had been in existence since 1857 but which awaited July 23, 1898, and these companies as godfathers, before it was christened Fort Rodman. The Colonel, Headquarters, and the remaining six companies proceeded by boat to various points along the North Shore, at some of which militia field artillery batteries had previously been on guard, the Colonel himself being stationed at Salem in command of the entire Essex County district. This transfer of troops was accomplished without peril or even discomfort. The 1st and 7th Companies under Maj. Dyar became the garrison at Salem; Maj. Quinby and the 2d Company were at Gloucester; the 6th Company was on Plum Island near Newburyport, and subsequently at Portsmouth; the 5th Company at Marblehead; and the 8th at Nahant as guard of the mining-casemate. Lieuts. E. Dwight Fullerton of the 8th Company and P. Frank Packard of the 2d were specially detailed to duty with the regulars at Fort Columbus, Governor’s Island, New York, and remained there several months. Lieut. Fullerton was called upon to untangle the snarl into which the War Department had gotten with regard to records of sick soldiers in the New York hospitals. It fell to the lot of certain “batteries” to reconstruct and man ancient earthworks whose history ran back many years. At Salem, Fort Pickering was put in commission; at Gloucester, the old Stage Fort where Myles Standish once came near having a battle; near Portsmouth, Forts Constitution and McClary; and at Marblehead, Fort Sewall. This is very romantic to relate. No doubt the renovated works with their armament of obsolete field pieces could have afforded some protection against Spanish raiders. But those who were called upon to occupy works built for seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth century warfare, and modernize them so as to render them useful under twentieth century conditions, agree in testifying that the romance is all in the narrative and not any in the fact. The 6th Company had at first been stationed in an earthwork on the Plum Island beach which had been constructed by the field battery, whom they relieved; as Plum Island, in June, is notable chiefly for flies and fleas, this company was glad enough when the transfer to Portsmouth brought the men again on solid ground. Fort Constitution had a long history--it used to be known as Fort William and Mary, and from its ancient magazine came the powder used by the patriots at Bunker Hill; but in 1898 it was a comparatively modern work, and mounted a battery of eight-inch rifles.