USA > Massachusetts > Reminiscences of military service in the Forty-third regiment, Massachusetts infantry, during the great Civil war, 1862-63 > Part 6
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I also saw for an instant the left flank of a regiment mov- ing on the double-quick at right angles to the road. This was probably the Twenty-third Regiment. It was, I judge, about a fourth of a mile across the valley, and its centre was some thirty feet or more lower than the outside. The left or southern side was quite clear of trees or undergrowth, while on the right the reverse was the case. On this open space of the left side the batteries of artillery were going into position in plain sight, one after the other, as they came upon the field. The Ninth New-Jersey, the Twenty-third
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and the Seventeenth Massachusetts Infantry Regiments, had already deployed as skirmishers among the trees and thickets at the bottom of the valley on the right of the road, and were making a sharp and continuous roll of musketry, which was soon followed by the deep and awful uproar of the artil- lery, as gun after gun unlimbered, and opened its fire.
The Confederates were posted in a thick forest on the north-western side of the valley. The Neuse River rolled between us and them, but, as at Kinston, it was entirely out of sight; and but few of us knew of its existence at that point. Our regiment passed on down the road, meeting, as we went, an irregular but quite continuous procession of wounded men coming up on foot from the line of skir- mishers. All of these were struck somewhere upon the upper part of the body : an arm was shattered, or, in most cases, the head, neck, or shoulders had been hit by rifle-balls. Streams of blood were trickling, in some instances, down their faces, upon many of which a deathly pallor sat. Some were so faint as to require the help of a comrade on each side ; but most of them walked alone with trembling and uncertain step. The expression which marked the countenances of all was of deep seriousness. They were silent; but, as we ex- changed glances, it seemed as though they pitied us as much as we did them. We were marching down into the fire which was fast swallowing up the line of skirmishers they had deployed. They knew, better than we did, what our com- pacted line of battle would meet in a few moments.
We kept steadily on, and soon became conscious of being again under fire. There was no music about it, however. We met this time not only the aim of the enemy, but the direction of the road and the situation of our own batteries was such, that we were really under a double fire, and, inas- much as our own forces were firing shells at very short range, we were in danger from their premature explosion. Fuzes are cut at the moment of use, and it is quite a nice point to decide with accuracy, in the excitement of action, the precise time and place at which the shell shall burst. Down we marched, however, until we had reached the bottom or centre
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of the valley, when we were halted, facing to the right, towards the enemy. Of them, however, we saw nothing. Before us was a comparatively open space, occupied partially by undergrowth, scattered trees, etc. ; then the Neuse, narrow at this point, fringed with the tangled vines and shrubbery of these regions, and entirely out, as I have said, of our knowledge as well as our sight; then, beyond that, a forest- crowned hill, or what passed for such in North Carolina : and on this rise of land, beneath its trees, and completely hidden, from us at least, in the luxuriant low brushwood, was a busy and defiant enemy. This we soon learned ; for, the moment that we halted, we became conscious of being the subjects of a continuous and tolerably well-directed infantry-fire, mainly, as I judged, of smooth-bores. Our opponents could not have been more than a few hundred feet from us, - not more than half as far as from the square to the ferry. That we did not instantly begin to fall in large numbers was due to the fact that we were slightly overshot. The air just over our heads seemed to be full of musket-balls. They struck the trees in our vicinity repeatedly ; and in a few moments the word was passed along the company line, that Edwin Benner was killed. This the most of us believed to be true, till after the action, when we were informed that a ball had glanced from a tree, and passed between his arm and body with sufficient force to cut his clothes, and slightly wound his side. He was not disposed to leave the company ; but his comrades, seeing the torn clothing, insisted on conducting him to the field-hospital. When his garments were removed, the ball dropped to the ground, upon which he immediately returned to his place in the ranks.
The battalion stood in line in this position somewhere from five to fifteen minutes. There were at least fifteen hundred men from the three skirmishing regiments just in front of us; but not a soul was visible, and the noise of their fire was drowned in the tremendous concussion of the artillery. No order came for us to fire, or for any other action. The in- ward prayer of every one of us, I have no doubt, if expressed, would have been, " For God's sake give us something to do !" -
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The suspense of such moments is terrible, and each moment seems an age. I doubt if the nerves of Marshal Ney himself would not have wavered, if the men detailed to shoot him had amused themselves by repeated volleys aimed just over his head. It needed only a single word from our colonel to have instantly changed our situation from extreme depres- sion to the most vehemently pleasurable excitement of the soldier's avocation, - that of returning the fire of the enemy. But the word did not come, and it is well that it did not. We were so nearly on the same level as our skirmishers, and so close to them, that they would have been more likely to have been hit than the rebels ; and besides, in our standing position, so near the enemy and in plain sight, we should have drawn the fire of the rebel artillerists, who would have quickly made a long list of "casualties " to tack on to our record, while they were so concealed that we could not have returned the compliment.
Finally, just at the moment when our patience was about failing us, the order came " Right face !" to the rear, on the road by which we had come on to the field. We moved back a little more than the length of the regiment, which brought ns partially under the cover of trees and bushes on the right hand as we had entered the valley. Into this cover, by orders, we passed, and lay upon our faces. The battery of Napoleons (Morrison's) had filed to the extreme right of our line, close to the river, and were making themselves generally useful in an obstreperous sort of a way. Their fire was directed nearly at right angles with the batteries on our ex- treme left, and they were evidently disposed to make the most of their opportunities. Our position in the woods brought us somewhat in their rear, and the copious smoke of their discharges drifted over us; so that our exposures here were limited to the general and promiscuous firing of the enemy : this, however, was sufficiently vigorous to keep us in quite close contact with mother-earth.
We lay in this manner some time, perhaps a half-hour. My position was close to the road up which the sad proces- sion of the wounded and the dead was continually passing.
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I have very distinct recollections of the deathly groans of poor wounded men, lying upon the stretchers, borne along the pathway only a foot or two above my head. It was not very enlivening ; but the moral forces which had been evoked by my experiences at Kinston were in the ascendant, and I recall a strange, weird-like kind of complacency in the awful scenes which were happening around me. While lying here, I saw Chaplain Manning go down the road to succor the wounded, unarmed, on foot, and alone, with the visor of his cap drawn down upon his face ; and a comrade tells me that he noticed Chaplain A. L. Stone of the Forty-fifth, about the same time, engaged as one of the bearers of a stretcher on which a soldier lay.
The next thing that happened was an order from the colonel to "fall in with fixed bayonets." This startled us ; for it looked like a charge either on our own part, or on that of the rebels. Repeated by the captains and their subordi- nates along the whole line, it penetrated our ears in spite of the thunder of our artillery. We rose promptly to our feet, took to the road, and instantly formed in line, facing to the south. We then responded to the order, " Battalion ! Right face! Forward ! March!" and proceeded again directly down into the valley. On reaching a spot a little in advance of where we had formerly stood, we found that the Massachu- setts Seventeenth was just in front of us, and that they were moving along the road on their hands and knees. The pre- cise length of time that it took us, officers and men, to copy their example, was so short that it was not appreciable. Down we went, every mother's son of us, except Col. Whiton, into a creeping posture. The cause was as follows : it was not the fire of the enemy which appalled us, but that of our own guns. They were arranged on the outer edge of a circle, into the centre of which our advance had taken us. The converging fire of thirty-six pieces of artillery was pouring over our heads, apparently not more than ten or fifteen feet above us. I say apparently : I might as well put it evidently, for we were not altogether dependent on our ears. I thought at the time, and I believe now, that the air was phosphores-
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cent with the light of the burning fuzes of the shells. A pale, pearly lustre overshadowed us, although it was mid-day, with a bright sun overhead. I have not the slightest doubt but that, if it had been in the night, we should have appeared as though covered with a sheet of fire. The wind of the batteries and the ammunition, for we were near enough to feel the effects of both, was like a gale : to tell the truth, we could hardly keep our feet.
We passed along the road a few minutes in this manner, wondering what it could mean, when all at once we heard from a distance in our rear the cry of "Halt!" feebly at first, obtruding itself, as it were, between momentary intervals in the firing, but becoming more distinct as the officer who uttered it approached at full speed on horseback, waving his sword. As he drew nearer to the line of fire, he halted in order to keep his head on his shoulders, and asked with great earnestness the very question we had been putting to our- selves : " Where do you think you are going?" In short, we were " about faced " instanter, taken back to our old shelter, and again lay upon the ground. The whole pro- ceeding had arisen from some misconception of orders, quite likely unavoidable under the extreme difficulty of giving and receiving them in such circumstances.
It so happened, that, when we fell in, Col. Holbrook was abreast of the left flank or rear of the battalion, and the mistake by which we had made the needless advance I have spoken of was corrected in season for him to hold the three rear companies on the ground where the line was formed. Lieut .- Col. Whiton was at the head of the regiment. When we retreated, our company lay, for the most part, a little farther from the road than we had done at first. In a short time two artillery caissons in one team came down toward us at a high speed, halting suddenly at the point where Com- pany H was lying. The drivers called out in stentorian tones to us to get out of their way : we complied, and they turned abruptly to the right, and passed over the ground upon which we had been lying in order to reach the battery in our rear.
The valley between the spot where we were and the river
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was full of small trees, and the soil was soft. As soon as the artillerists lost their descending momentum, the obstacles that they met brought them to a standstill, and they began to cry out lustily to our battalion for aid. They were but a short distance from us; but their voices sounded, such was the noise of the firing, as if at the bottom of a well or at the end of a long tunnel. For a few moments, only a few of the more adventurous spirits among us rose to their feet; but a most vigorous appeal from our captain for volunteers soon sent a large group of us to their assistance. They had man- aged to interlock their wheels with trees of several inches in diameter, so that they could neither advance nor retreat. Our men got under the axle, and lifted on the wheels of the rear caisson until all parties were convinced that the labor was useless; then the artillerists got out their axes, and began to cut their way clear, while we returned to our places.
Shortly after this, as I have reason to believe, though I did not know of it at the time, private Isaac Y. Smith of Orleans, Mass., a member of Company E, was shot through the body as he lay upon the ground, and instantly killed ; those nearest to him only noticing a slight tremor or convul- sion as he passed away. In the confused way in which we were lying, he was surrounded by the men of our company. A number of casualties happened along our line about this time, which possibly led to another movement. We were taken across the road over into the field or hillside on the left, and placed in front of a battery, about a hundred feet or more in advance of it. The battery was diligently firing twelve-pound rifled shell. Here we lay until the battle was ended, - an hour at least, so far as my memory informs me.
It seems almost incredible, but I am certain of the fact, that while in this situation I slept soundly for some time ; how long I cannot tell, as all that I recall is the fact that I became conscious of waking from a condition of absolute in- sensibility to all earthly concerns. A man must be very tired when he can lie on the hard ground and fall asleep, with the horrid screech of a continuous passage of rifled shells just over his head. But I did it. We were not sensible at the
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time of any special attention from the rebels; but the Forty- fifth, lying in a similar position, just at our left, lost some of their men, their color-bearer, Parkman, being among the number. Somewhere from two to three hours had passed since we entered the valley. During the noon-hour the firing on our part ceased, and on the part of the rebels it had dwindled to occasional discharges from sharpshooters. Our regiment was withdrawn from the field to the rear, and, after an hour's delay, was put in charge of the baggage-train for the rest of the day. While we were waiting, we got our dinners as well as we could: I think without any thing warm. There was a mutual and joyful exchange of con- gratulations among us, that we had escaped with so little loss, though there were some marked exposures. I saw one man lift his cartridge-box from his thigli, and show where a ball had passed between it and his body, tearing the leather into fragments, without cutting his clothes. Months after- wards I made the acquaintance of a member of the Dedham company, who told me that he carried a large fragment of shell all the afternoon in his haversack, knowing nothing of its presence there until he ate his supper. Something like a dozen of such incidents as these occurred, involving injury to blankets, clothes, and equipments, without bodily harm. It is astonishing that we passed through such exposures with such slight loss.
Chaplain Manning's letter, already quoted, makes the fol- lowing interesting statements : -
"On Tuesday morning, soon after breaking camp, the roar of cannon in the advance told us that a battle was at hand. We were now near Whitehall, where the rebels made a desperate stand ; and for several hours we knew not whether life or death, defeat or victory, was to be our lot. The firing of our own batteries was terrific ; and those of the enemy replied with much spirit, plough- ing up the ground about us, and cutting down now and then a tree some few rods to our rear. Under this cross-fire our regiment and some others lay during the battle. The wounded and dead were constantly passing us borne on stretchers or in blankets, by persons detailed for that purpose. The volleys of musketry in the
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edge of the woods to our front were nearly continuous, where we eould see the flitting forms of the rebels ; and the ineessant dis- charges of artillery made the heavens shake. Many of our men were hit by bullets and fragments of shell, and several were slightly hurt ; but only one was killed outright. A shell carried away the arm, and tore away the vitals, of Isaae Y. Smith, a private from Cape Cod in Company E, killing him instantly. The hospital was in a hollow, sheltered by trees, near the entrance to the field of battle. I visited it several times during the fight, where the seenes of the previous Sunday were repeated, only I saw no rebels there. But the same ghastly wounds, unmurmuring submission to painful operations, the same image of death, - plurima mortis imago, - was around me ; and though I could not aeeount for the faet, and it was contrary to all my impressions, the sufferers lay perfeetly still, hardly a groan or complaint escaping.
" After the battle, we had time to bring away the body of our slain eomrade, and lay him, wrapped in his soldier-garments, in a neatly prepared grave. Caps were removed, and tears stood in many eyes, while, surrounding his lowly resting-place, we joined in a simple prayer. And there we left him. . . . The color-bearer of the Forty-fifth, Parkman, slain in the same battle, sleeps near him, laid carefully down by his thoughtful comrades, 'his martial cloak wrapped around him.' . . .
" My letter must close abruptly ; but it will accomplish its pur- pose, if it strengthens the belief in the hearts of the people of Massachusetts, that the men who have gone forth to uphold her honor are worthy of the renown of our aneient Commonwealth ; worthy of the saered eause which calls them from their peaceful homes to the wasting ills of the eamp, fatigues of the mareh, and horrors and perils of battle."
Our situation in this fight cannot be fully understood without a statement of what took place on the skirmish line, for which purpose I will quote a part of the official report of the Twenty-third Massachusetts Regiment :-
"On the 16th. our brigade having the advanee, we came upon the enemy at Whitehall : they were strongly intrenelied on the right bank. the river being quite narrow at this point. A gunboat, partly built, at this place was destroyed. The Twenty-third was immediately ordered forward to support the Seventeenth Massa-
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chusetts and the Ninth New-Jersey, who were in advance, and had engaged the enemy. The line being formed, we moved for- ward to the woods and up to the bank of the river, where the enemy poured the lead and iron into us like rain. We opened fire when they were within ten yards of us. Separated by the narrow stream, which was so deep that it was impossible to charge across, it was provoking to the boys to stand there -and not be able to give them the ' steel ; ' but a steady fire from our men made them seek shelter behind the trees. The regiment remained under fire about two hours, when it was ordered to the rear. We lost in the engage- ment thirteen killed and fifty-four wounded ; total, sixty-seven. We were obliged to leave some of our dead and wounded on the field, on account of the rebel sharpshooters on the right bank of the river."
We learned, as we passed on, that there had been no halt of the column. Six regiments besides our own, the Forty- fourth and Fifty-first Massachusetts Regiments in addition to those already named, were all that entered the valley : all the rest of the forces, to their extreme surprise, had turned to the left, and passing to the rear of our batteries, being some- what sheltered from fire by the crest of the hill, had con- tinued their march without cessation. On a part of the ground which was too steep to admit of the passage of the baggage-train, a road had been graded by our pioneers during the fight by a deep cut on one of its sides for several hun- dred feet. Along this road we passed, still hearing the fire of the rebel sharpshooters. It semed so insignificant, how- ever, after what we had just seen and heard, that we paid but little attention to it until we became conscious, as a turn in the road brought us nearer the other side of the river, that we were ourselves the direct object of the fire. It was a long shot, however. Occasionally a ball would whiz past or overhead, and through the rail fence we could see the dirt fly as they struck the ground. There was some consultation among us, not even a corporal being in sight, in respect to the feasibility of replying; but we could see nothing to aim at, so we desisted, and soon passed beyond the reach of our persistent friends across the river.
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As a fitting close to this account I will relate an incident which happened to me early in the afternoon. As I trudged along by the side of the wagon to which I was detailed, I noticed walking near me a little runty, oldish-appearing sol- dier of the Ninth New-Jersey. He was one of those tough, wiry men, made of steel, who seem to unite the qualities of . the lower orders of creation with a fair share of the distinc- tively human traits. We had some conversation together, and I remember that in the course of it he held out his gun, which was smutty from firing, in front of him, in a kind of informal, off-land "Present arms," slapping the stock, as he did so, in the usual manner of the manual, but with an evident and peculiar affection, and remarking at the same time as follows : --
" I know that I have killed three rebels with this to-day." These words were uttered with an earnestness and intensity of feeling which would have done credit to John Brown. There was nothing, however, of malignity in them, nothing any way ferocious. There was a patriotic fervor about the man that made it apparent to me that it was not individual hate which actuated him, but a whole-hearted devotion of soul to his calling as a defender of the Union. The incident did not make much of an impression on me at the time: I felt no repugnance to him, and I have often thought of it as proving what a wonderful power of adaptation to circum- stances our race possesses.
The baggage-train was composed of four-horse, covered wagons. We marched three abreast of each side of the wagons all the afternoon, until camp was reached, when we were excused, to our extreme satisfaction, for the wagons were driven much of the time faster than we could travel, faster even than the rapid pace we had been accustomed to. If we could have clung to their rear end with one hand, it would have aided us sufficiently to keep up; but we found a group of men attached to each one of them, - men who had fallen to the rear, put their guns into the teams, and were holding on for dear life. They all protested that they were so exhausted that they could not yield their places for an
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instant. The road at this point was very heavy. I found that the teamsters were obliging us not only to "double quick," which is fast travelling, but to " run," which is much faster, to keep up with them. Sensible that I could endure such rough usage as this but a short time, I gave my driver fair warning that he must not depend on us for protection, and resumed my usual pace. I soon fell, of course, to the . , rear, and was not alone in doing so. This made me quite anxious for a time, as I knew we must be near the rear of the column.
After a while, however, the train having closed up the gap in the column, which had been open, slowed down somewhat, and we managed, by effort, to retain our places near the wagons.
This experience was a brief one ; but it was very suggestive to me. Those teamsters were practically a part of the army ; their protection was essential to the safety of the whole force ; we might as well have lost our artillery as to have lost them : but virtually they were a discordant element among us. Their demeanor and conduct was indifferent and selfish to the last degree. No one appeared to be in authority.over them, and they acted as though they would cast loose from the wagons, get on to their horses and run, on the least appearance of danger. We of the guard were really at the mercy of those whom we were detailed to protect. There was no concert of action between us and them, and the desperate efforts we made to do our duty were exhaustive in the extreme. If we had been suddenly attacked, I do not see what we could have done to defend ourselves, much less our convoy. It was impossible for the three mounted field- officers of our regiment to exercise authority over so long and thin a line ; and what was beyond the power of a man on horseback was, of course, impossible to weary line-officers, after a week of such marching as we had seen. The whole arrangement struck me as being open to the gravest criticism.
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