They bivouacked at Kingston and next day marched to the Weldon railroad, reaching it at the bridge below Goldsboro, where the Confederates had massed a large body of troops to protect their lines of communication and supplies.  This was a battle in earnest, the artillery was deafening, and the enemy repeatedly charged the Union lines.  The Northern batteries were on a knoll in front, and at the very moment that a long line of gray was seen approaching through this field and the Massachusetts men were ordered to lie down, so that the shot and shell could pass over them, their boy captain walked openly forward to the batteries and stood there in the smoke.  Careless of himself, he yet realized to the full the meaning of this grim duel, for when the fight was over and the Northern men cheering, he was silent Captain Walkley asked why he did not cheer with the others.  “Too many hearts made sad to-day,” was the significant reply that showed he counted the cost to its bitter end, though he went forward none the less bravely.

Long, monotonous days of garrison duty followed for the men, days of drilling, of idling up and down the streets of the dull Southern town.  But Captain Conwell used his spare minutes to advantage, and when no work connected with his company or the personal welfare of his comrades occupied him, he was studying.  Then came the order to drive the Confederates from a fort they were erecting on the Newbern Railroad about thirty miles inland.  This expedition, known as the Gum Swamp Expedition, was an experience that tested the mettle of the men and the resources of the young captain, and an experience none of the survivors ever forgot.  It was a forced march, a quick charge.  The Confederates fled leaving their fort unfinished.  The Union men having successfully completed their work, began the return to Newberne, and here disaster overtook them.  The Confederates hung on their rear, riddling their ranks with shot and shell.  Suffering, maddened, with no way to turn and fight, for the enemy kept themselves well hidden, with no way of escape ahead if they remained on the road, they plunged into the swamp, that swept up black and dismal to the very edge of the highway.  The Confederate prisoners with them, warned them of their danger, but the men were not to be stayed when a deadly rain of the enemy’s balls was thinning their ranks every minute.  The swamp was one black ooze with water up to their waists, a tangle of grass, reeds, cypress trees, bushes.  Loaded down with their heavy clothing, and their army accoutrements, one after another the men sank from sheer exhaustion.  No man could succor his brother.  It was all he could do to drag himself through the mire that sucked him down like some terrible, silent monster of the black, slimy depths.  But Captain Conwell would not desert a man.  He could not see his comrades left to die before his very eyes, those men who came right from his own mountain town, his own boy friends,