Doyle,

Well that makes sense. Sending them home on furlough they wouldn't be needing the rifles and no guarantees the units back in Virginia wouldn't, then they got pulled in to AoT prior to Shiloh. One would think I could find something on their weaponry at Shiloh, but they were reissued their combat load there in late April so like you said, 29,500 cartridges would give them 80 rounds a piece, more or less. Thanks for the clarification on that one. I guess I just "presumed" (I don't like to assume) they carried their rifles home but then I didn't think about the bigger picture of what was happening back east.