Here’s a little description that I wrote today for the Peninsula Campaign
Marching in the rain
The day proceeds along the same wretched, miserable path as the last two. The ceaseless rain has taken on a nightmare quality by now. It feels like you are all being drowned in Noah’s flood, inevitably to be swallowed up by the endless torrent. Your feet and legs itch uncontrollably today, and the water filling your boots puts you in an intensely sour mood.
Your soldiers still obey your orders, but they straggle along the road, and many of their heads hang limply down in front of them, their eyes fixed on each squelching, difficult, muddy step. They seem oblivious and uninterested in the world around them, too taken up with the endless misery of their own existence.
The guarding of the trenches is the same dull, wet duty as yesterday. You start to feel hopeless deep inside, though you suppress any outward sign of this emotion. All the reasons to fight begin to fade beneath the growing feeling of discomfort and unhappiness. The soldiers around you show more openly what you are starting to feel. They are slumped against the walls of the trench, or sitting down in the mud, holding their heads in their hands. They do not talk to each other or banter, but just lay there like discarded sacks.