August 20th until the regiment reached Alexandria on the 2d day of September, 1862, it was one continuous march and counter-march, by day and night, moving up the Rappahannock as far as White Sulphur Springs. On the 29th and 30th of August near the Bull Run battle ground. A very hard battle was fought, in which the Nationals were forced from the field, and again late in the afternoon on the 1st day of September at Chantilly, a short distance from Fairfax Court House, a sanguinary battle was fought, which continued late in the evening. In this last engagement the Nationals held the field at night, and on the 2d the Union army fell back within the fortifications around Washington city. During the last two or three days of the above campaign the Twenty-ninth regiment was completely cut off from the main army, as it had been ordered to guard the quartermaster stores with other government property on the railroad at and near Bristow station, and when ordered to join its brigade it found the enemy in the rear, so that it was only by a circuitous route in the direction of Brintsville, and a forced march that it reached the Chantilly battlefield during the engagement, on September 1st. Here it bivouacked for the night, and on the following day marched to Arlington heights, via Alexandria, where it went into camp.
During the last twelve days of the campaign the Twenty-ninth suffered severely for rations and rest, it being on the march, under fire, and on the skirmish line the entire time. When we reached Fairfax station, on the platform of the depot we found an immense table upon which our wounded boys were being subjected to the ofttimes bungling butchery of ignorant alleged surgeons, a number of whom were busily engaged in depriving the poor fellows under their charge of wounded
