We would need letters or a diary to record day-to-day activities of Capt. Palmer's Company. Usually they were employed as provost guards and would have been assigned by squads to railway depots, river landings, government offices and depots, just as the "City Guards" were before that command was broken up. They also would have been assigned to assist the post commissaries and quartermasters in those towns, as well as the senior medical officers at the hospitals at Demopolis and Selma. Quartermaster responsibilities included acquisition and supervision of labor details, which we may see described as "impressing negroes". All of these functions required clerical assistance, so men who could "do sums" would be detailed as clerks. Of course anyone in these reserve units who could work as a mechanic, a carpenter or a shoemaker, &c. would find his services in demand and receive a permanent detail.

Here's how the law of Feb. 17, 1864 described reserve functions:

SEC. 8. That hereafter the duties of provost and hospital guards and clerks, of clerks, guards, agents, employees or laborers in the commissary's and quartermaster's departments, in the ordnance department and clerks and employees of navy agents, as also in the execution of the enrollment acts, and all similar duties, shall be performed by persons who are within the ages of eighteen and forty-five years, and who, by the report of a board of army surgeons, shall be reported as unable to perform active service in the field, but capable of performing some of the above named duties, specifying which; and when those persons shall have been assigned to those duties as far as practicable, the president shall detail or assign to their performance such bodies of troops or individuals, required to be enrolled under the fifth section of this act as may be needed for the discharge of such duties: provided, that persons between the ages of seventeen and eighteen shall not be assigned to these duties: provided further, that nothing contained in this act shall be so construed as to prevent the president from detailing artisans, mechanics, or persons of scientific skill to perform indispensable duties in the departments or bureaux herein mentioned.

The next section described punishments for Confederate staff officers who continued to employ able-bodied men other than reserves in their offices.