CHARGE OF MAY 22D.
WHILE waiting the charge of the storming party and watching their progress across the field to the enemy's works, I noticed a group of general officers close to our left, composed of Grant, Sherman and Giles A. Smith, with their field glasses, watching the little storming party painting a trail of blood across that field. Those distinguished commanders, unlike ourselves, were standing behind large trees, and squinted cautiously out to the right and left, exposing as little of their brass buttons as possible, and I think I saw them dodge a couple of times. I thought of the convincing speech the officer made to his command on the eve of the battle, when he assured them that he might be killed himself, as some balls would go through the biggest trees.
General Ewing's brigade led the assault after the storming party had sped their bolts, and advanced along the crown of an interior ridge which partially sheltered his advance. This command actually entered the parapet of the enemy's works at a shoulder of the bastion, but when the enemy rose up in double ranks and delivered its withering fire his forces were swept back to cover, but the brave and resourceful old Ewing shifted his command to the left, crossed the ditch, pressed forward, and ere long we saw his men scrambling up the outer face of the bastion and his colors planted near the top of the rebel works.
Our brigade was formed in a ravine threatening the parapet, 300 yards to the left of the bastion, and we had connected with Ransom's brigade. From that formation we fixed bayonets and charged point blank for the rebel works at a double quick. Unfortunately for me I was in the front of the rank and compelled to maintain that position, and a glance at the forest of gleaming bayonets sweeping up from the rear, at a charge, made me realize that it only required a stumble of some lubber just behind me to launch his bayonet into the offside of my anatomy, somewhere in the neighborhood of my anterior suspender buttons. This knowledge so stimulated me that I feared the front far less than the rear, and forged ahead like an antelope, easily changing my double quick to a quadruple gait, and most emphatically making telegraph time. During that run and rush I had frequently to either step upon or jump over the bodies of our dead and wounded, which were scattered along our track. The nearer the enemy we got the more enthusiastic we became, and the more confidence we had in scaling their works, but as we neared their parapet we encountered the reserved fire of the rebels which swept us back to temporary cover of a ridge, two-thirds of the way across the field, from which position we operated the rest of the day. When we got back there we had been fighting and maneuvering for more than three hours. Once during the assault I remember the 116th Illinois was on our left. Gen. Giles A. Smith was between me and that regiment; Colonel Tupper, its commander, was making a speech to his men and advising them to take the works or die in the attempt. I thought then, and I have had no reason to change my mind since, that Tupper was gloriously drunk. General Smith snatched off his hat and yelled, "Three cheers for Colonel Tupper." I caught off my cap and together we gave one full grown "Hurrah" and about half another, when the explosion of a monster shell inconveniently near us adjourned the performance sine die. I saw also at another time during the fight, a captain coming back from the front on the run; he had been wounded in the wrist. A man was trying to lead him off the field, but couldn't keep up with the fleet footed captain. He was vainly trying to clutch the wounded man's coat tails as he pursued him, and though under a deadly fire at the time, more than a hundred of us who beheld the race, laughed heartily. When we got behind the ridge we were ordered to lie down, and it felt good to know that we had even a little ridge of solid earth between us and the enemy's bullets. We lay there on our backs and looked back into the throats of the artillery as it shelled the enemy's works over our heads. We could see the balls distinctly as they were discharged from the cannons, and they looked like bumble-bees flying over us, only somewhat larger. While we were thus watching the flight of the balls, one of them struck and cut off the top of a tall sapling standing between us and the cannon; the ball by that means was depressed, and instead of going over us came directly for us and into our midst. Every one who saw it thought, as I did, that the ball was coming straight at him. I rolled over to avoid it; I heard the dull thud of its striking and a scream of agony, and I stood up and looked. That ball had struck and carried away the life of Morris Bird, a private of Company H, and the only son of a widowed mother. I saw a private of the 4th Virginia, which regiment was sheltered there with us also, rise to his feet to fire his gun, when one of our cannon balls took off his head, and it was a clean decapitation, too. The enemy shelled us incessantly the rest of the day after we gained this position, and it cost us many brave men.
One close call of an exploding shell knocked me senseless and took off the right arm of Louis Cazean, a private of my company. They told me afterwards that poor Cazean, when he lifted up the fragments of his shattered right arm dangling from the white cords and tendons, said, "Boys, I'd give five hundred dollars if that was my left arm instead of my right." When I regained my senses I found Sergeant Whitcomb of my company bathing my head with water and trying to force some commissary whiskey down my throat. He didn't have near as much trouble getting the whiskey down me after I came to and found out what it was. For a long time the rumbling in my head was deafening and painful, but gradually subsided and the concussion left me a whole skin and with no deleterious effects. And the day wore on until night closed in upon us, and then we lay down and slept on our arms accoutered as we were.
Through some bungling, when the other regiments were ordered to retire during the night to the rear of the Walnut hills, my regiment was omitted from the list, and when we received our order to fall back in the morning we had to go out under the fire of the 25,000 enemies. That blunder cost us some brave men; for the rebels availed themselves of the splendid opportunity to fire upon our retiring lines. We had failed to take Vicksburg by assault, notwithstanding the bravery of our men; notwithstanding that many stands of colors were planted on the enemy's works; Sergeant Griffith with eleven men of the 22nd Iowa regiment entered a fort of the enemy, and his men all fell in the fort except the sergeant, who captured and brought off thirteen confederate prisoners, and Captain White of the Chicago Mercantile battery immortalized himself by carrying forward one of his guns by hand to the ditch, and double shotting it, fired into an embrasure of the work, disabling an enemy's gun in it and cutting down the gunners.
The rebels had more than 25,000 men behind their works, and why they didn't kill every soul of us I cannot imagine. How glad we were to get back of the Walnut hills on the 23rd, and to go into camp with the assurance that no more assaulting efforts would probably be required of us. When we sat around the campfire down in the ravine that night we compared notes of experiences during that bloody battle and talked about our dead and wounded comrades. Old Joe Smith, who was one of the storming party volunteers, said, "Boys, I had sweet revenge on the brutes yesterday. I got right into the crotch of a fallen tree close to their works, so that I was protected in front and on both flanks, and I laid my gun across the log so that I had constant aim on their works, and when one of them fellers got up to shoot I would see his gun barrel come up first, and I would have a dead liner on him when his head popped up and I could salt him every time, pretty near." "But," said Joe, "there was one feller kept gitting up right opposite me and his face was so dumbed thin I couldn't hit 'im." After supper we were detailed to dig rifle pits, and had talks with rebels across the bloody chasm.
