USA > Maine > The story of one regiment; the Eleventh Maine infantry volunteers in the war of the rebellion > Part 23
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Company G .- Killed, Corporal Amos W. Briggs. Wounded. Captain Francis W. Sabine; Sergeant George Payne; Privates Leonard F. Blackwell, Charles F. Campbell, William H. Peva, Wilbert C. White.
Company I .- Wounded, Corporal Albion W. Pendexter; Pri- vates Charles II: Corson, Orrin B. Hibbard.
Company K .- Killed, Private David Peabody. Wounded, Cor- poral John B. Alden ; Private Roger A. Erskine.
Killed, 10 ; wounded, 38 -- total, 4S.
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE BATTLES OF DEEP RUN AND FUSSELL'S MILL.
On Reserve-Form for Assault-Carry the Enemy's First Line-A Terri- ble Rifle Fire -- A Momentary Check-A Desperate Assault-Our Left Enfiladed-A Graphic Pen Picture by Sergeant Miller-Our Loss in Officers -- Captain Merrill in Command-Regiments on our Right Fall Back-The Fight for Our Flag -- The Final Assault-Our Rapid Rc- treat-Reform Quickly and Check Pursuit-Casualties -- The Dash of Gregg and Miles-Throwing up Intrenchiments-Skylarking-The Assault at Fussell's Mill -- Nearly a Panic ---- Fall Back to the Right- Retreat to the James-At Deep Bottom again.
WITH the morning of the 15th of August came a drizzling rain. There was skirmishing along the front, but we lay on reserve for the day, so were not engaged. Only one of our men was wounded, Private Benjamin F. Griffin, of Company F, by shrapnel. In- deed, there was no heavy attack during the day, it passing with General Birney searching, with Tenth Corps brigades not engaged the day before, for the enemy's left, when he was to assault with the whole of his corps, while General Gregg covered its flank with his cavalry. The Second Corps held the line to the river, massed in readiness to take advantage of any break in the enemy's line. But Birney took so wide a circuit that it was night before he got into position. At night we went into bivouac, still on reserve, in a grove of beautiful trees, through which ran a brook of fine water. The commissary teams came up, rations were served out, camp fires lighted, and the cooks prepared supper. Then we lay around the company fires behind our stacked guns, and slept the night away. At daybreak we were aroused, and coffee, already prepared, was served ont. Then we fell in and marched to the front, threw ont skirmishers, and quickly found ourselves under fire.
"On resarve," said an Irishman of the Second Corps, "yis, resarved for the heavy foighting," and his sally became a corps joke ; and Foster's brigade found that the " heavy foighting " was just what it had been reserved for on the 15th.
Our assaulting column consisted of Terry's division (in which
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was our brigade) and Craig's brigade of the Second Corps. The enemy's works were held by Wilcox's and Mahone's divisions. We moved backwards and forwards, to the right and left, for some hours in getting into position ; now crossing an open field, when we were raked by the enemy's artillery, and then moving through woods where were the enemy's skirmishers, when they would open a furious musketry fire upon us. At last we took position in a thick woods, and lay down in line of battle. We were so close to the enemy's outer line that the bullets of the volleys they swept the woods with flew over .and among us, and men were killed and wounded while the line was nervously await- ing the order to charge. During this time Colonel Plaisted sat on the ground, surrounded by his officers, explaining to them the plan of attack and the nature of the ground we must charge over from a rough chart that be held in his hand.
It was nearly ten o'clock before an aid came hurrying down with the order to advance. Then our line arose and sprang for- ward, with a wild hurrah that sounded far to the right of us and somewhat to the left. Almost immediately we were subjected to the most severe fire we were ever under. No more skirmish line this, but an outlying line of battle. The woods fairly rang with the screeching of the bullets ; still we pushed on, when suddenly the First Maryland, on our right, fell back ; not directly back, but obliquing into our own now swaying linc, and in another second, in spite of the shouts of their maddened officers, the men of the two regiments were falling back in confused mass. But it was not only our regiments that the terrible fire threw into confusion ; the whole line of assault was staggered and halted by it. For myself, Isprang to a tree and clung to it. A burly sergeant of the First Maryland sought its shelter too, and we hugged it in company, pressing closely to each other as we heard bullets strik- ing the farther side of the tree, both half-ashamed of our position, both half-amused, and both fully determined to keep our shelter until the storm was over. As a glimpse of a dream, I remember that almost at our feet a soldier lay dying from a wound in the throat, the blood flowing in spouting jets as he gasped in his last agonies.
As soon as the terrible fire slackened, the men of our regiment shook themselves clear of the dismounted cavalry, closed up their shattered line, and formed with the flanking regiments that were
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245
getting their own staggered columns into formation. A minute, and all were ready to go in again, and as General Foster rode on the scene, galloping along the line of his brigade to make sure that his regiments were making ready for another rush, and rode. up to the Eleventh, calling out, "Forward, boys !" we rushed ahead, and before the enemy could repeat the withering tactics of a few minutes before, had driven them headlong from their rifle pits and were pursuing them to their main intrenchments under a heavy fire poured on us from their main line, which ran along a ridge of ground covered by a wide slashing of heavy-bodied trees, felled in all directions. In charging through it the men were somewhat protected by the heavy logs, and fortunately, too, the enemy must fire down hill, giving a tendency to overshooting, . else not so many of us as did would have reached the crest of the hill. Before we did, many had tumbled headlong among the fallen logs, and how any of us reached it, few can tell, but many of us did, the rebels retiring with more rapidity than grace as we poured into their works.
Beyond the captured line we saw a smooth field of perhaps a hundred and fifty yards in width, dipping into a wood-bordered run. It was to this run that the enemy had withdrawn, and from it they kept up a rapid fire on us, our men returning it with the more spirit that we had found, besides many dead and wounded rebels, boxes of cartridges strewed along the enemy's side of the works, cartridges that fitted our guns perfectly, so furnishing us with a much-needed supply of ammunition.
But the fire that annoyed us most was an cufilading one from across a run beyond the left flank of our regiment. Beyond this run, on higher ground than we occupied, the enemy had built works to sweep the front of the works we had just taken. From here, suugly ensconced behind a difficult run, and hidden from us by a stout growth of trees, left standing to mark their position, they swept our flank with a terrible fire. Efforts were made to dis- lodge them by sending brigades down our front to charge the run, but the cross-fire the charging brigades were subjected to forced them to retreat to cover.
The rebels now advanced from this run, and drove the brigade on our left across the run we had charged through. This brigade had failed to carry the enfilading work that it found in its front, and had taken shelter among the trees in the slashing before it.
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THE STORY OF ONE REGIMENT.
Having driven them back into the edge of the woods, the rebels pressed so closely on the flank of our brigade that the left regi- ment was forced to change front to cover this flank, now swept by a terrible artillery and musketry fire. Sergeant Edwin J. Miller, of Company C, wrote a graphic account of this battle, in which is the following concerning this movement :
" Batteries which were stationed beyond the range of our muskets, in front and flank, redoubled their efforts against us ; shells screeched, sputtered, and crashed through the trees, and bounded along the earth ; bullets sang and whistled about us, and gave a peculiar thud as they severed human bones and laid low good and brave men. Hard-pine trees, seventy and eighty feet high, which stood around the works, were stripped of bark and limbs the entire length, and as completely as could have been done by machinery. Men were constantly falling. We were ordered to shield ourselves as best we could. Sergeant George A. Bakeman, of Company A, who had taken position as lookout to watch the movement of a large force assembling at the edge of some woods just beyond a cornfield, took position against a large tree. Captain Folsom, deeming the place unsafe, told him to keep covered. He replied that he could not cover from all sides with one tree. An instant later a bullet struck him in the head, kill- ing him instantly.
"Being somewhat exhausted from the heat, I sat down upon the root of a large stump, from which the earth had been removed to build the pit. I had been thus seated only a moment, when a soldier crowded in between myself and the stump. I moved my bigness toward the end which overhang the pit to accommodate him with a seat, which he barely had time to fill before zip came a bullet from the direction of the cross-fire, which went just deep enough to furrow his face and carry away both eyes. A bounding shot from a battery struck the top of the pit, scattering the earth in a shower, smashing the head of a soldier who was peering over. and nearly tearing to pieces another who stood on the high ground to the rear. The next moment an unexploded shell severed a large limb from a pine tree overhead which leveled three men in its fall."
For some time there had been frequent cheering along the rebel line, indicating the arrival of reinforcements. Then through the openings in the woods across the field could be seen the marching
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and countermarching of bodies of men evidently getting into position for assault. They soon assaulted our front twice in quick succession. Sergeant Miller tells the story of these assaults in a way that cannot be bettered.
"' There they come ! There they come!' was the excited cry, and a long line in gray, with bayonets glistening and flags flying, was seen just clearing the woods on an elevated piece of ground across the field. There was nothing intervening to hide so much as a button, save a few straggling corn-stalks on their left. 'Boys, now's our time,' said big Sergeant Fisher, of Company E. The commander gave the order to fire, which was several times repeated by the subordinate officers. 'Fire low ! Fire low !' . Our blood was up, and the command, ' Cease firing,' was not fully heeded until some time after the last standing rebel had disappeared on the run into the forest again. Brave soldiers are made by giving them plenty to do; and jokes were freely cracked during the few moments which intervened before the next charge.
" The top of a flag was now observed in a deep ravine which ran across the field in our front, not more than fifty yards away. Word ran along the line to be in readiness. In a few moments the flag began to move, and with it the whole rebel line came in view. The sight caused the greatest excitement. The officers tried in vain to make the men reserve their fire until the enemy's lines should clear the ravine far enough to insure its destruction. Our men began firing almost at once. The rebel color-bearer was shot dead on the brow of the hill, falling forward upon his staff, and the line was driven back in less time than it would take to count twenty."
Wounded men were sent to the rear as fast as they were struck. The dead rested where they fell. All of the wounded that possibly could, and some that were very seriously so, too, made their own way to the rear rather than weaken the line by taking assist- ance. Those entirely unable to go alone were helped from the field by comrades who accompanied them only until they could place their charges in the hands of the hospital attendants, when they made their way to the colors again, some to be themselves killed, or to leave or be carried from the field wounded. There was neither shirking nor flunking that day ; not in the Eleventh, anyway, and although one-half the regiment available for duty
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had fallen within sixty hours, those that remained stood to their work as manfully as if the regiment was a thousand strong.
We were short of officers, our remaining line officers barely suf- ficing to furnish each company with a commander, some lieuten- ants commanding by detail other companies than their own ; and now Captain Lawrence, of H, was mortally wounded. His fierce bound into the air, as the bullet struck his muscular body, will never be forgotten by those who saw it. Many of us loved this gallant officer for his personal qualities. The bullet that removed him from the world took from it a frank, brave, and noble-minded gentleman. "
Colonel Plaisted was overcome by the intense heat before our successful assault, and had been taken from the field, leaving Lientenant-Colonel Ilill in command. Colonel Hill's right arm was shattered by a bullet, while he was watching the enemy's movements. Groaning quite as much at the necessity of leaving the field as at the pain of his wound, our gallant leader for the first time turned his back on the enemy. But not until he had called upon Captain Merrill to assume command of the regiment. Fortunately, Captain Merrill was known to the regiment as an officer of tried mettle, with a fighting experience dating from the Battle of Fair Oaks, where he had commanded most of the companies on the skirmish line, and had earned high commendation for the skill and courage he had shown. Knowing him as they did, the men of the regiment now looked to him with confidence, and obeyed his clear-voiced orders without question during the ex- citing events that followed swiftly upon his assamption of command.
For now fierce rebel yells on our right told us they were ad- vancing there, having abandoned their attempt to break through at the position we held. The yelling quickly fell toward our rear, and showed that our line was falling back. Nearer and nearer came the uproar, as regiment after regiment fell to the rear, until only our brigade was facing the enemy. On our left the enemy was creeping through the felled timber : on our front there were movements indicating an impending attack ; on our right the fir- ing opened heavily, telling us that they were flanking the position of our brigade. Sergeant Miller says : " It now became evident to Sergeant Gross, the color-bearer, that he must retreat with the
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flag, or the banner would soon occupy a position in the rebel capi- tol at Richmond. The rebels were closing down, and were not more than thirty yards distant. Sergeant Gross tore the flag from the pit and started for the rear. Remembering, however, that no order had been given to retreat, he turned back, planted the staff on the work, and aided the guard in its defense by firing several shots from his revolver in the very faces of the enemy, who were bent on its capture."
At last the order came to be ready to fall back. The colors were sent to the rear, with instructions to plant them with the colors of the other regiments on the line of works captured in the morning, to serve as a rallying point for the regiment. Sergeant Miller says : "Sergeant Gross carried the colors in his arms, and was followed by the guard, one of whom fell dead as they left the works. The flagstaff, one and a half inches in diameter, had been shot off in three places, and the flag had been pierced by sixteen bullets."
A simultaneous yell on front, and right and left, told us that the assault was coming. The order ran down the line to fall back, after pouring a last volley into the enemy. So, facing the swiftly advancing masses of the foe as we best could, we poured one volley almost into their faces, then turned and, with a storm of bullets whistling after us, ran down the hill across the ravine and into the shelter of the forest.
For myself, I ran swiftly through the slashing. As I reached the valley my eye was caught by a running brook. I was very thirsty. My tongue clung to the roof of my mouth, my canteen was empty, and the glimmering water was alluring in its cool suggestions. I hastily snatched my tin cup out of my haversack, and, scooping it full from the brook, drank with a sense of relief that made me momentarily oblivious of flying bullets. Glancing backward, I saw the rebel skirmish line moving down the hill. 1 thought it time for me to go, and started ; but just then a Union officer, with a half-dozen men, came running from the right, and, secing me taking the cup from my lips, said, " Lend me your cup." I handed it to him, and he stooped toward the brook. There was a dull thud, and he fell headlong into the water. shot through the body. In a second his men had seized him, and were running into the woods with him, and J, stopping just long enough to secure my precious cup from where it had fallen, ran
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into the woods, bounded up the hill, and found myself with our reforming columns.
We took our position in line at the captured rifle pits. A. strong skirmish line was thrown out, which soon met that of the advancing enemy, when sharp fighting began, and lasted far into the night.
During the operations of the 16th, Gregg's cavalry, supported by General Miles with a brigade from the Second Corps, had moved up the Charles City road, driving the enemy's cavalry before them, until White Tavern, only seven miles from Rich- mond, had been reached. The Confederate cavalry receiving a reenforcement, Gregg was in turn forced back upon Miles, both finally falling back to Deep Creek, a tributary of Deep Run, fighting as they retreated, holding one position until a portion of their men had taken a second one a half-mile or so back of their advance one; then the advance line would fall back behind the new line and take up a position about half a mile or so farther in the rear in their turn. Desperate as was their situation, they did not abandon either their dead or wounded, carrying both from the field strapped across the led cavalry horses or in front of the troopers. Finally the hard-pressed men reached Deep Creek, behind which Gregg reestablished his line, Miles returning to Fussell's Mill to take position on the right flank of our corps. All day Mott had been threatening the enemy along Bailey's Creek with a strong skirmish line to learn their force, finding their works strongly held everywhere.
General Birney proposed that we assault at five o'clock that afternoon, but the force the advance of his skirmish line de- veloped made him abandon this idea. Besides, about then Gregg's line before Deep Creek was so strongly attacked as to compel him to cross all his force to the bank nearest us to sustain himself. On receiving these reports, General Grant gave up the idea of pressing the movement further. determining, as in July, that we must hold a threatening position for a few days longer to keep the heavy force of the enemy in our front while he launched a force from the other flank at the Weldon road.
The losses of our regiment, the 16th of August, were as follows : Field. -- Wounded, Lieutenant-Colonel Jonathan A. Hill.
Company A .- Killed, Sergeant George. A. Bakeman ; Corpo- rals Charles L. Jordan, Joseph L. Mitchell; Private Thomas
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McFarland. Wounded, Lientenant Lewis HI. Holt ; First Ser- geant William H. H. Frye ; Sergeant Charles I. Wood ; Corporal Joseph H. Johnson ; Privates Benjamin P. Bibber, Francis M. Burton, Nelson O. Crocker, Michael Doyle, Charles S. B. Hodg- don, Ruben H. Small, Eben E. Smith. Prisoner, Francis M. Burton.
Company B .- Killed, Corporal James L. Potter ; Private James T. French. Wounded, First Sergeant Lewis W. Campbell ; Cor- porals Jerome B. Ireland, Joseph F. Barney, Henry L. Blake ; Privates Henry C. Ames, Albion A. Bangs, William Davis, Josiah H. Gordon, Frank L. Kenney, George H. Miller, Alfred Smith. Prisoners. Privates Albion A. Bangs, Hanford Crocker.
Company C .- Wounded, Corporal Edward Noyes; Privates John W. Elliott, Hiram B. Nichols, Dwight C. Rose.
Company D .- Killed, Private Elbridge E. Hanscom. Wounded, Privates Frank Bubier, John W. Day, Augustus N. Googing, Leonard S. Leighton, Timothy McGraw, George O. White.
Company E. --- Killed, Privato William A Quimby. Wounded, Privates. Samuel Babb, Eugene Bragdon, Frank I. Brown, Josiah Felker, Charles H. Ham, John C. Reed, Henry Smith, Samuel N. York. Prisoners, Privates Stephen W. Brown, Samuel N. York.
Company F .- Killed, Privates Augustine E. Hall, Enoch E. Hinckley. Wounded, Corporal Ambrose F. Walsh ; Privates Ebenezer Brookings, Andrew J. Burgess, Horace E. Choate, James B. Crosby, Nathan P. Downing, George W. Eastman, Rodney C. Harriman, Henry S. Kimball, Warren HI. Moores, Samuel G. Richardson, Osgood J. Yates.
Company G .- Wounded, Sergeant Henry B. Rogers ; Corpo- rals Lewis L. Day, Josiah L. Bennett, William Shed ; Privates Augustus H. Danico, Charles E. Fish, Frederick A. Frazier, Frank Johnson, Samuel R. Norton.
Company H .- Killed, Corporal George E. Morrill ; Private Luman R. Smith. Wounded, Captain Luther Lawrence ; Pri- vates James Lawrence, Charles E. Marshall, George P. Moody. Joseph F. Stevens, Elbridge P. Wardwell, Isaac W. Wardwell, George H. Whitney, Prisoner, Private Ellis A. Briggs.
Company I .- Killed, Private Randolph A. Shorey. Wounded, Sergeant David B. Snow ; Corporal James W. Moody ; Privates Patrick H. Canning, Samuel B. Haskell, Rufus K. Shorey.
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Company K .- Wounded, Sergeant Andrew B. Erskine ; Pri- vates Charles F. Bickford, John F. Buzzell, Lewis C. Gray, Irwin L. Prentiss, Warren L. Whittier.
Killed, 13; wounded, 81 ; prisoners, 6-total, 100.
In the night of the 16th we took position close to the enemy's works and began to throw up intrenchments. By morning, work- ing in relays, we had built a strong line of works. Our position, that of the Eleventh, lay along the side of a steep hill, so that the battery crowning it could fire directly over our heads. Here we lay on the 17th, so near the enemy that we could see into his works from the crest of the hill. The picket lines, really heavy skirmish ones, kept up a steady fire all along the line until in the afternoon of the 17th, when a flag of truce was sent out and a truco arranged to continue from four to six o'clock. And when the truce expired firing was not begun by the opposing lines, neither side caring to begin the firing, so that we passed a quiet night sleeping in the intrenehmenis, all lying on our arms.
The 18th passed quietly on our front until along in the after- noon. Until quite late in the day there was an almost complete cessation of firing, and the men of the opposing lines lounged around freely, sometimes within sight of each other. I remember that a few apple-trees stood in a very exposed position on our right, a position directly under the range of a rebel battery, and within a few rods of it. One bold Yankee, after looking longingly at the green spheres on the tree branches, ventured to throw a stone into the branches to rattle a few apples down. The apples were hard, green ones, regular "cholera pippins," but they were apples, and there was a scramble for them. The "Johnnies " watched our men's antics with merriment, perhaps with an intimate knowledge, some of them, of the sort of fruit the trees bore ; maybe feeling a fiendish delight in thinking their foes in cating it were running a greater risk than in gathering. Then one impa- tient Yankee, tiring of the slow process of stoning the apples down, ventured his person into a tree, and the enemy did not object. Then another climbed into a tree, then another and another, until the trees were filled with masses of skylarking men, shrieking, tussling, and laughing to their own and the enemy's enjoyment until the last apple had been torn from the trees.
This easy condition of things lasted until about five o'clock, when the sudden opening of firing on the skirmish line indicated
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an impending assault. The skylarking and frolic of the men ceased as the fire of the skirmishers increased in rapidity and volume, and every man hurried to his post. Suddenly the battery behind us opened with a roar, our skirmishers came flying out of the woods and over our works, while behind them sounded the wild yell of a rebel charging column. Sergeant Judson L. Young, of Company D, who had been on the skirmish line, was wounded as he reached the works. As soon as our skirmishers were over our works, we opened a terrible tiro, every man loading and firing for his life ; but steadily, swiftly, the heavy columns of the enemy poured from the woods, yelling and firing wildly, those behind pushing those in front, until it seemed as if the pandemonium of shrieking, rushing demons would roll over our works, by sheer weight of numbers, in spite of the fire mowing their front lines down. And just then, as if to complete our destruction-for to be driven back into the tangled woods just at night, chased by a superior foe, far from a supporting column, meant not only the loss of our batteries but Andersonville for hundreds of us-just then the One Hundreth New York, on our right, broke and left their part of the works in spite of shrieking officers, General Foster himself dashing among them, yelling like a madman and brand- ishing his sword in a vain attempt to hold them. But the old Tenth Connecticut had been held on reserve and was just rushing to the support of the line, and the men of the two regiments, con- fident of each other's support, and of the steadfastness of the Twenty-fourth Massachusetts, strung along the gap with light- ning speed until they had filled it after a manner, every man redoubled his efforts to hold the enemy, now surging at the rough abatis planted in the front of our hastily built line. They had stood our terrible fire well until now, but they could not stand the prospect of the cold steel we were ready to meet them with should they persist in crossing the works ; they wavered, broke, and fell back into the heavy woods between us.
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