In afternoon near
Locust Grove, we met the advance of the enemy, and our sharpshooters engaged them in a fierce skirmish until dark.
While skirmishing, the brigade in the rear was busily employed throwing up breastworks of poles and earth, latter dug up with picks made of sharpened oak poles and bayonets, and thrown on the logs and brush with tin plates and cups and bare hands.
It is marvelous with what rapidity a fortification sufficiently strong to resist minie balls can be thrown up. A sense of danger quickens a man's energies.
