The VI Corps was in high spirits after the success of the Valley Campaigns under Maj. Gen. Philip Sheridan, but the enlisted men were nervous about this attack; not realizing just how thin the Confederate lines had become. They knew only that they were being asked to attack trench lines that they had always assumed to be impregnable. Believing that the assault would end in a disaster similar to Cold Harbor ten months earlier, many men wrote down their names and home addresses on pieces of paper and pinned them to their shirts so their bodies could be identified afterwards.