The regiment returned from its brief assignment to Malvern Hill on Aug. 8, 1862, marching all day and half the night to its old camp on the Yorktown railroad.

But the next day, Saturday, they were ordered to turn right around and go back on picket duty between Malvern Hill and Richmond. They left at sunset and marched until 2 a.m.

Quartermaster clerk William H. Hill, of the Spartan Band, recorded that they camped near some springs at Holly, three miles west of Malvern Hill and twelve miles east of Richmond.

That Sunday the brigade heard preaching from William Benton Owen, chaplain of the Seventeenth Mississippi Regiment. The next morning they commenced their picket work in the area, to give early warning of any Union advance.