29 Aug., ‘64. Came the well-earned promotion to Lieutenant Colonel of Capt. John W. Raymond of Co. G’4 Sept. At 8 o’clock P. M. came orders to proceed to Bermuda Hundred and embark for New Berne, N.C. The regiment stopped over at Norfolk, to reclaim the camp-equipage and other property left behind, last spring; there was a delay of three days for lack of transportation. It was natural enough that men. Who had been through four or five months of such uninterrupted active service should be quite ready for such dissipation  as Norfolk could afford. All who could be got together were hurried on hoard a transport which dropped down the stream. Here Corporal Thomas J. Peach, Jr., of Co. B,’ was, in some unexplained manner, lost overboard and drowned.Chance, or that sort of intentional accident which is apt to befall old soldiers, detained several men who next day secured passage on the steamer Fawn to rejoin their comrades by way of the Chesapeake and Albemarle Canal.
These were:
 Evans, Henry B, Private, Co. A.
 Gunnison, Frank H.,        “  “ “
 Gibson, Chas. IL,       “ “D.
 Leary, Daniel,       “ “ “
 Cashman, Michael, Corporal,   H.
 Eaton, Joseph, Private, “D.
 Fox, Charles,        “ “I.
 Wentworth, Asa H.,       “ “
 Emerson, George,       “ “K.
 Proctor, John,       “ “

10 in all according to Evans of Co. A.’ beside the 23rd men, some recruits were on their way to join regiments at the front and five Colored Infantry acted as Guard.
It is not difficult to picture the scene. The little steamer, short and narrow that she may pass the locks, and of light draft on account of the shallows of Currituck Sound, glides puffing along between the dense cranks of dismal cypresses. Her passengers, with the happy-go lucky carelessness of veterans, thinking no harm so far from the front,  or, should I say, the usual fatalism of the soldier who so soon learns to throw all responsibility on his officers, are grouped about the decks. They chat and smoke arid sleep for the lack of sleep implied by five months active participation in the Virginia campaign of ‘64 is not soon retrieved.
 They approach Coinjock and the bridge swings away as if to yield the usual passage an event hardly worth notice in, a less monotonous voyage. Not so fast. Room for safe passage too late for retreat the bridge swings back and the boat is a helpless prisoner between the high buffs of the narrow cannel. A body of bush whackers, glad of an opportunity to murder safely, pour a volley from the overhanging bank. Hardly a man escapes injury, although so far as our 23rd men are concerned, only one, Gibson of D ‘ is killed and Fox of ‘ I’ with two wounds, one perforating his body, is left for dead. The enemy, securing, as they think, the mail, and firing the boat, hastily decamp with their prisoners. How hastily may be judged from the theft that the larger and more important part of the mail was afterwards recovered from the wreck.
 Four days a-foot took them to a log-prison in N. Carolina (perhaps Salisbury); they were taken thence to Wilmington, and to Columbia, S. C., where, by contrast at least, treatment and rations seemed fair and reasonable. Thence, after three weeks, to the horrors of Florence where they found 12,000 fellow prisoners in one stockade to whom was doled a half pint of meal a day and even this pittance was withheld on any pretext once for three consecutive days and where, in the approaching winter, their only protection was the rags their own campaigns and their thieving captors had left to them. Still, most of them survived, their imprisonment being comparatively short, although one of them, Evans of ‘A,’ weighed but 90 pounds.