Report of Asst. Surg. Charles Smart, U. S. Army, Medical Inspector Second Army Corps, of operations October 1-31.

HEADQUARTERS SECOND ARMY CORPS,
November 16, 1864.

DOCTOR: The following report for the month of October, 1864, is respectfully submitted:

By referring to the close of the report for September it will be observed that at the end of that month the troops composing this corps were under arms in the trenches in front of Petersburg, Va., and in hourly expectation of orders calling them to a more active field of service. The division hospitals had been depleted of their sick, and were in readiness to move whenever called upon to do so by any movement of their respective divisions. One-half of the ambulances and one medicine and one army wagon to a brigade were harnessed and hitched in accordance with orders. The wagons, as is usual under such circumstances, were loaded with a few flys, kitchen arrangements, and battle supplies. Under cover of the night of September 30 the Third Division was removed from the trenches and bivouacked in the woods in rear, the First and Second Divisions stretching out on the left to occupy the vacated works. On the following morning the liberated troops proceeded by rail to Yellow Tavern, from which they marched along the Squirrel Level road, past Poplar Spring Church, to the Peebles house, then General Warren's headquarters. General Warren, with the larger half of the Fifth and Ninth Corps, was at this time pushing toward the South Side road. After some little delay at the Peebles house our Third Division was placed in position on the left of the line and retiring somewhat, so as to prevent the enemy from executing successfully his usual flank attack. The weather during this movement was very unropitious, the rain on the 1st and 2nd of October having been continuous and heavy, the nights chilly and raw, and the roads so muddy as to render marching very disagreeable as well as laborious. The hospital of the Third Division, as soon as the troops had started on the cars, followed the course of the corduroy road until it reached the Yellow House, where it went into park until future developmetns should indicate a suitable position for its establishment. In the afternoon it was located and put into working condition in the strip of woods about midway between Yellow Tavern and the Gurley house. This position was selected because it was in the immediate vicinity of Warren Station, from which it was intended to send by rail to City Point whatever wounded might be received. The distance between this point and the position held by the division was nearly three miles, a distance which, if the troops became only lightly engaged, would entail no discomfort upo but which in the case of a serious engagement would prevent the wounded from being removed from the field the requisite celerity. In selecting this place it was therefore distinctly understood that should an engagement of moment seem imminent the hospital would move forward to the vicinity of the field. The First and Second Divisions in the meantime were occupying the works in front of the city. The former stretched from the Appomattox to Fort Morton, the letter connected on the left with the colored division of the Ninth Army Corps. At the beginning of the month the hospital of the Second Division was situated at the Southall house, that of the First at the Birchett house, but on the afternoon of October 1, when the Third Division hospital vacated the woods in rear of Deserted House to follow the troops to the left, the