THE CHARGE OF MAY 19.
ON the 18th of May, 1863, Vicksburg was completely invested. A year before the first attempt was made against this fortified city, and in reply to a demand of surrender at that time the rebels said: "Mississippians did not know and refused to learn how to surrender to an enemy." Now we'uns had arrived and proposed to teach them how to surrender to an enemy.
Some time before daylight on the morning of the 19th we were quietly aroused and instructed to prepare our breakfasts without noise or unnecessary fire or light. Every man of my company proceeded, by the aid of twigs and dry leaves, to make just fire enough on the protected slope of the hill, to boil his tin cup of coffee and broil a slice of diaphragm um et swinum for the morning meal. We did not at first know what the program for the day was, but before we had dispatched our breakfast it was whispered to us by those who claimed to have access to headquarters that we were scheduled to charge the enemy's works in the early morning. I hadn't had a good view of the Vicksburg fortifications the day before, and now in the first faint light of the morning, while the men were eating and making preparations for the charge, I crept cautiously out on the crest of the hill, and so far as I could without exposing myself, contemplated the defenses against which we had to charge. Three strong bastioned forts on the right, center and left on high grounds within a line of entrenchments and stockades confronted us. It required but a brief inspection to satisfy me that more than likely we wouldn't go into town that day. I confess that my observations did not in any great measure increase my confidence in our ability to take the place by assault. When I returned to my company I saw many of the boys entrusting their valuables with hasty instructions to the few lame and sick ones, who must needs stay behind and care for the company effects while we were gone. I felt like turning over my stuff also, but happened to recollect I had no valuables. From the outlook I was satisfied very many of us would not answer to roll call that night, and I felt that I might be one of the silent ones. A more beautiful May morning than that of the 19th I had never seen. The pickets had ceased firing, the birds sang sweetly in the trees, and the cool morning breeze was fragrant with the perfume of flowers and shrubs. It was hard to believe that such a beautiful morning as that would bring such an eve as followed it. When the sun was well up then the various bodies of our troops were quickly marched to their respective positions in what was to be the charging line. My regiment was marched forward and to the right of our night's position, to the base of the last range of the Walnut hills, and we were instructed then that when all of our batteries fired three volleys in rapid succession our whole assaulting column was to move forward and charge the enemy's works. The space intervening between our line and the enemy's fortification over which we must pass was badly cut up by ravines and hills and covered by brush and fallen trees. When the signal for the general assault came my regiment, the 113th Illinois, belonging to Giles A. Smith's brigade of Blair's division and Sherman's army corps, was among the first to make a determined attack. While awaiting the signal to go in we had been practicing, over a big sycamore log behind which we were crouching, a few long range shots at the rebel stockade, but when the three rapid artillery discharges came we first stood up, then we scaled the log and pushed forward. On our immediate right was the 6th Missouri, and I being on the right of our regiment went in side by side with the men of their left. A lieutenant on the left of that regiment was in his shirt sleeves and wore a white shirt; he and I went side by side for several steps, when he lunged forward upon the ground, and in the quick glance I gave him I saw a circle of red forming on his shirt back. The leaden hail from the enemy was absolutely blinding. The very sticks and chips scattered over the ground were jumping under the hot shower of rebel bullets. As I now recall that experience I can but wonder that any of us survived that charge. The rough and brush strewn ground over which we had to charge broke up our alignment badly, and every soldier of our command had to pick his own way forward as best he could without regard to touching elbows either to the right or left.
When about two-thirds the way across the field I found myself with one corporal of my company considerably in advance of the rest of our men, and we two knelt down behind a fallen tree trunk to watch and wait their coming. When thus on our knees a canister shot entered the bottom of the corporal's shoe and lodged in his ankle joint, and while I was assisting my comrade in cutting off his shoe and prying out the bullet, most of our company passed by us. When I again stood up, I could see a fragment of our line only, to my left, with which I recognized our colonel and regimental colors. I started towards our flag, but had gone only a few steps when one of the enemy's shells exploded in front of me, and when the smoke had lifted a little I saw that our regimental flag and the colonel had gone down. From under the end of a log beneath where the shell had exploded rose up a comrade, Darrow by name, his red shock of hair powdered and plastered with the dust and dirt of the explosion and his eyes flashing with indignation. "Ain't it awful?" said I to Darrow, and the profane wretch replied indifferently, "They're shootin' damn careless."
I went on towards the enemy's works looking for the men of my company and when within half gunshot of the rebel stockade, in a shallow gulley where the freshets had some time worn a little ditch, I found a squad of seventeen of my regiment hugging the ground and keeping up a steady fire on the rebel works. I lay down with them at the upper end of the line where the cover was the least, because it was the only place left for me, and I thought of the words of old French General Blucher, who was a veritable giant and always stuck up half his height above the entrenchments, Napoleon said to him one day when under fire, "Now, Blucher, you can afford to stoop a little?" "Damn your bit of a ditch," said Blucher, "it ain't knee deep!"
And there lying flat on our backs and loading our pieces in that position, with the merciless sun blistering our faces, we passed that day of dreadful fighting. Once during the day, when some of our forces made an advance demonstration off to our right, we saw the slender blue line advance for a distance and then, repulsed, retire, leaving the field thickly strewn with the blue sheaves Old Death had gathered so quickly. Then a rebel battery was run up behind the enemy's work in our front and enfiladed our lines. Then how gloriously our little squad did pepper that battery when they would run it up in sight. We silenced the battery, but by our carelessness we lost one of our number killed, shot in the center of the forehead, and five others wounded. Often that day the bullets from front and rear passed so closely above our prostrate bodies that the short cane stalks forming a part of our cover, were cut off by them and lopped gently over upon us.
But we fared better than other regiments of our brigade. On our left Sherman's regiment, the 13th regulars, lost 77 out of a total of 250 men; their commander, Captain Washington, was mortally wounded and every other officer of the regiment more or less severely wounded. Also, the 83rd Indiana and the 127th Illinois on our right suffered more than we, but such a long dreadful day it was without food or water, under the excessive heat of the sun, lying flat in that old gully, but hardly daring to move a limb or change our position for fear of attracting a rebel volley. As the sun sank in the west and we saw night approaching, our fears were excited for our safety. We well knew if we remained where we were until nightfall the enemy would sally out of their works and capture us, so we held a parley and agreed that at a given signal all of us who could would scatter and run for some near cover in the rear, where resting briefly we would run on to other covers still further to the rear, until the dusk of approaching night would finally shield us, and we carried out that program so faithfully that all who made the run escaped unscathed. My first sprint took me to an old dry sycamore stump a few rods away, behind which I threw myself just in time to escape being numerously punctured. When I got good and ready I ran again, and again, until I could no longer discern through the gathering shadows the long long line of rebel stockade behind me, and then I stopped and took one long breath—bigger than a pound of wool. Not one of my comrades could I then see. They had scampered away like a bevy of partridges and were swallowed up in the gloom of night. When I was making my way rearward through a patch of cockleburs up the slope of the hill, I heard a wounded man groaning nearby, and I went to his assistance. He was shot through the leg above the knee, and I had to stop some of the incoming stragglers to assist me in taking him back to the field hospital. When we got him down into the first ravine, he begged so piteously for water we laid him down and with my canteen I groped along in the darkness until I heard the trickling of a spring and managed to catch enough water to stay the poor fellow's thirst until we got him back to a surgeon. Then it was night, in the shadow of those great forest trees, of the blackest description. None dare make a light or fire. In every direction could be heard soldiers calling for their comrades without responses. I didn't know where the headquarters of my regiment was, and I could find no one who could tell me. I was both thirsty and hungry. I was heartsick and tired. It was getting awfully cold. I sat down at the roots of an old forest tree and tried to sleep. All night long I heard the stretcher bearers bringing in the wounded, and I thought I would freeze before morning.
