The Debatable Land by Arthur Willis Colton

If Gard entered the war, as he claimed, in the theory of a spiritual adventure, it must be hinted that he had sometimes lost sight of his theory. Outside events had shown a tendency to usurp and absorb in the process of the happening. It was not so noticeable during the first nine months. He marched, drilled, felt the rain and the cold wind at night in the open, heard the enemy's guns, saw bleeding men carried by from the distant field, and shared in what was called "the defence of Washington," a matter that did not seem difficult or exciting beyond reason. He was made a sergeant -- a purely outside event. There was leisure to watch the scene, to keep one's poise, to experiment with existence. If at times his old sense of separateness, of isolation among objects, scenes, and persons whose importance to him was only in their inner effect upon him -- if this sense at times seemed less vivid than before, and the movements of men in masses, the common enthusiasms, made him feel that his solitary journeying was in some mystical way accompanied by watching myriads with the same forward step and shadowy goal, it was rather a passing, a recurrent sensation.

But with the middle of spring came three months of storm and stress in the Virginia peninsula. He came out of the ranks by reason of some inscrutable opinion of him conceived and reported to authorities -- something connected with an expedition through a swamp -- was promoted because there were no other officers to speak of in the company when the army reached its new base at last on the James River.