The Maine bugle ... campaign; 1-5 Jan. 1894-Oct. 1898 - Maine.gov

CHARGE OF THE HEAVY ARTILLERY. 5
pets, etc., so we did not know we were whipped and kept on
fighting. The rebs got disgusted with our way of shooting
straight at them and kept behind a stone wall, and the reinforcements
coming up, we did not all go to Andersonville as we
should have done if they had been disposed to advance their
flanks and simply scoop us all in. I well remember also that
an old veteran came over to where we were lying in a piece of
woods and said, " Well, you can fight if you did come out of
the defenses."
We lost as near as I can remember, about four hundred of
our regiment here. I also remember sometimes, in a dim, hazy
kind of way, of the march to Milford Station, of the North
Anna, of Cold Harbor, and skirmishes and fights without names,
all parts of the great battles, I suppose. Some of these mem-
ories are dim to me; it seems as though the smoke of burning
powder obscures them ;
and some are quite sharp and clear yet.
I recollect the march to, and the crossing of the James, the
advance on Petersburg, of lying all night—we were in the Sec-
ond Corps then—and hearing the roar of the trains as the
advance of Lee's army was being hurried into the defences of
the city; also the fighting on the sixteenth and seventeenth of
June, and the rumors of an advance on the eighteenth, when it
was our duty to lead ; all of this comes back to me as a dream.
During all this marching and fighting our regiment had dwindled
down until scarce nine hundred men remained, but we had
learned how to fight. On the morning of the eighteenth of
June seventy-five men of Co. I answered " Here " at roll call.
There were one hundred and fifty at Spottsylvania. Just one-
half was gone. I was the second man on the right of the com-
pany in the front rank, and next but one to the regimental
colors. Of the original eight who formed the first two files on
the right, two were dead and three wounded, leaving but three
in the ranks, but others had closed up to the right, and our front
although shorter, was still solid. I think it must have been
about three o'clock in the afternoon when we came out from our
breastworks and began to advance. We moved a short distance
to the front and then up to the right, down a sunken road that