About 9:00 that evening, the reinforcements arrived, and the boats finally filled up and headed south, toward Pittsburg Landing, where the broken remains of a once-proud Union army still held a foothold of ground. It had been raining since late afternoon, and Newton stepped off the boat into ankle-deep mud. In the pitch-black wilderness, he stood in the rain, waiting for the desperate fight that was only hours away; all around him, the sounds of wounded men rang in his ears. Later, Newton remarked that his only thought at the time was of how well his rubber poncho kept out the pounding rain.