(375) We lay down along side of a battery which was firing and I saw Gen. Sigel on his horse giving orders to "fire percussion!" The fortune of war threw Christman in the front rank and he being a large man, and I a slender boy, I crouched down behind him. The Rebels were charging upon us, and about the first ball that came near us struck Christman in the breast; and he died without a sound. After the fight in which I was captured, I helped to carry his body off the field and into a little stable or some kind of an out building, and I supposed it was buried by the Rebels.
(376) After the death of Christman and before we got a chance to return the fire of the Rebels our company was ordered to the right of the line to prevent a flank movement. This threw us over a hill into a woods, and we did not notice that the main line was being driven back until it was quite a distance away. Then when we discovered this we "skedaddled" as fast as our legs would carry us.
(377) Becoming exhausted I fell behind. Seeing three fellows in blue cloths in a field to the right, I supposed they were some of our boys, and got over a fence next to them. They aimed their guns at me and yelled out to surrender. I first thought I would jump back over the fence and try to escape, but I saw it was no use, and held up my hand. They had on homespun cloths of blueish color. One of them, a sergeant of a Georgia regiment, took me to the rear, and treated me very kindly allowing me to pick up a haversack and a blanket, and this latter probably saved my life.
(378) I reached Andersonville the 29th of May, and endured with others the oft-told horrors of that place. It took the scurvy and the diarrhoea but on the 10th of September I managed to "flank out," in company with Sergeant Rodgers and Col. Cooke of the Eighteenth Pennsylvania cavalry, who had known me at Waynesburg in their state. Instead of being exchanged I was sent with others to Florence, Ala. Here there was no prison ready for us, and by getting some of the pure air of that place and also some vegetables I got better of the scurvy. Sergeant Rodgers ran the guards here and got away, and I would have gone with him, but my leg was bent nearly double with the scurvy, so that I knew that I would hinder him and we would both be captured.
(379) On the 8th of December, I was paroled with a thousand of the sick and sent to Charleston Harbor, S.C., and transferred to our lines. I never was exchanged, so I suppose I am still a prisoner of the Southern Confederacy.
(380) The hardest thing in all my prison life was to feel that as a soldier I was practically useless except to aid in keeping some Rebel soldiers out of the field. While our regiment was winning its first victory at Piedmont and enduring the terrible march from Lynchburg and helping the peerless Sheridan to send Jubal Early "whirling" up the Valley, I was lying in the sands at Andersonville and Florence, missing all the glorious record of the regiment. But it was the fate of war. So far as the chances of death were concerned, however, the percent of mortality was greater in prison than in the field.
(381) I could write many pages of incidents in prison life but one must suffice. At Florence there was some clothing sent through the lines to us by our Sanitary Commission. It was given out to the most needy, and there wasn't much choice. I tore my only shirt (which I hadn't washed for three months) up into strips so that it barely hung together, in order that I might get a new one. The first day of the distribution I gave it to one of my companions—I think it was Freeman Youkin—and he went up to where the clothing was being distributed, and came back with a new shirt which he got on the strength of his (my) old one. The next day my detachment was called and when the distributing officers reached me he asked me if that was my only shirt. I replied that it was. "Well," he said, "you had better get a needle and thread and sew it up, for you can't get another new shirt on the strength of that one." So I got left.
(382) Private W. C. Mahan of Company I, tells the story of his being taken prisoner and his prison life as follows:
(383) At the battle of New Market Private Wm. Thompson of my company was badly wounded, his leg being broken by a musket ball. Another man of the company and I started to carry him off the field. We were told that we would find the ambulances at a certain place, but we failed to find them; and having to carry the wounded man we fell behind, and were captured. At night, we the able prisoners, were allowed to go under guard out over the field to hunt up our wounded. A Captain of the Thirty-fourth Massachusetts, who was himself wounded, found his brother on the field wounded. I recall to mind that I saw the Rebel Gen. Breckinridge talking to this Captain. Some of our wounded were put into an old house that night and our unwounded carried water to them.
(384) We, the prisoners, were taken via. Staunton to Lynchburg. We were kept at this latter place for a few days. Here one day two of our men got to talking about somebody with whose conduct on the way here, I believe they were displeased, using some pretty severe terms about him. The guard who was nearest them, a quite young fellow, thinking or pretending to think that they were talking about him though they were neither talking to, nor about him, shot one of the men, killing him. It seemed as though this young Rebel thought that he had done a great thing in killing a Union soldier, for he, insisting on doing so, followed the box with the corpse, to the grave. Some of the other Rebels condemned the conduct of this young fellow as being barbarous and brutal.