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Chapter 2 FIRST TASTE OF GUNPOWDER
The sun came up hot that morning in early August at Iuka. It promised the kind of day that all northern Mississippi knew in the summer - hot and dry and dusty. By mid-morning Private Baxter was wishing for the offshore breezes he remembered at Mississippi City and for the pleasant cooling the Gulf brought his state?s south coast. But the mid-morning brought no cooling breezes. It did bring, however, a persistent rumor that the 20th Mississippi regiment was about to move.
This rumor was not new. Once the regiment was filled by arrival of the Morton Pine Knots (they became Company H), it expected orders to go to Virginia. Some talk pointed to Memphis where, it was said, Maj. Gen. Leonidas K. Polk had asked for the regiment. But this morning in August the rumor ceased to be a rumor; it became a numbered special order from regimental headquarters, and it directed all concerned to prepare for three days? railroad travel. (As it turned out, more than three days were required, but in 1861 all travel orders seemed to have been copied from the same three-day original.)
Baxter welcomed the order to move. And probably every other member of the regiment felt as he did. The tedium of camp life, with its endless drills and fatigue duties, had become a burden of monotony to every private soldier. The excitement of going to war (uniforms, flags, bands playing, civilians applauding) had worn thin in the three months since Baxter had volunteered, but now this order to move promised some shooting at the Federals.
That afternoon Company E drew bacon and hardtack from the commissary, struck its tents, and got its company baggage ready to move. Destination had been identified only as "place of rendesvous 530 miles," but everyone seemed to know this meant
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