"We arrived in Richmond, Va., and were switched onto the C. & O. for Newport News.  Arrived there about 12:00 and duly taken to Fortress Monroe, arriving here about 1:00.  We unloaded and were met by an officer of the camp we were to go and told we had to hike out.  He said it was a short way, only a mile and a half, and in the rain and water at that.  We arrived at camp and were given a warm supper and some blankets, and shown our quarters.  We had expected barracks as we had in Omaha, but found instead, tents, and cold at that.  Too tired to build a fire, we turned in, slept fairly well and arose at 6:00 next morning.

     "We were lined up and told what to expect and how to expect it, and I guess we got all that was coming to us.  We cleaned after that for a balloon field, grubbed stumps, chopped trees and moved dirt, from eight in the morning till five at night, and I mean we worked.  This continued for about a month and then started flying balloons and made about twenty flights a day.

     "A word here about camp and its site.  We were quartered, as I said before in tents, boarded up five boards high with a floor and tent stove and five cots to a tent.  So you see they were fairly good size and very comfortable.  We also had electric lights.  We were situated in a large grove of holly and hemlock on the beach of Old Point Comfort, fronting Chesapeake Bay.  The camp itself was very pretty.  Across the track from us were the coast defenses of Chesapeake Bay - a string of batteries extending over a distance of two miles, large caliber rifles ranging from eight to fourteen-inch and also large mortar batteries, all of the disappearing type.

     "The place was heavily guarded, as several attempts had been made to damage the batteries, but since the arrival of the balloons it seems the attempts were turned in our direction.  One attempt was made in which I had rather a conspicuous part.  It was while on guard on night the latter part of January.  I was on the second shift from 8:00 to 10:00 p.m., two hours on and four off, then on again 2:00 to 4:00 a.m.  Things were quiet till about 2:30.  I saw a figure on my post near the hydrogen gas tanks, which are kept filled and are very explosive.  I walked up fast called 'Halt' once.  No reply, so called again.  On second call the figure crouched down and still no answer.  I was probably eighty or ninety yards from it, yet when I called the third time and no answer, I, according to my orders, was supposed to fire to kill.  But the figure at the third call started to run and I fired twice and followed up, but the same beat me to the timber.  I called for the corporal of the guard and reported.  He in turn called the commanding officer, who called the entire camp and a man hunt was indulged in the rest of the night with no luck.  Just a few days before we came here they got to one of our largest balloons and cut it beyond repair, so you see the war isn't all on the other side.

     "While in Old Point I visited places of interest such as Old Norfolk and Hampton and Phoebus.  I was in an old church at Norfolk that was built in 1640 and still has a cannon ball in the side of it that was fired by Lord John Dunmore in taking the city from the French.  The old churchyard is still there.  Gravestones bearing dates back to 1619 and '20 and the old English type of marking is still quite plain.  These old stones tell of how the inmate died and majority had been killed in duels and the common age was between twenty-one and thirty.  The streets are all very narrow and nearly all the buildings are of the low, flat type of years ago.  The people are of the slow, easy-going class and never seem to care about anything.  The business houses are all the same.  The lack the snap and get-up of the western people, as we are called.  The natives here think of us as being from the far west, where things are still wild.

     "We left Old Point two weeks ago and came here.  This is an embarkation

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