Anticipating the coming assault, the enemy had thrown a heavy skirmish line into a line of rifle pits running along enfilading points, to sweep the woods with a galling fire. It is very unpleasant to lie in action under such a fire and see comrades to your right and left struck by unseen foes. If a man has nerves they are soon in a quiver, and if he has not known he had any before, he learns that he is not made quite of iron after all. We found it so in the half hour we lay in this position and it was really a relief when scudding aids dismounted and darting through the woods from tree to tree brought the order to charge. Quickly we arose to our feet, and rushed forward with the wild cry which seems as necessary to a charging force as the breath with which they give it. Almost immediately we were subjected to the most severe fire we were ever under. No mere 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 1st Maryland fell back, not directly back, but obliquing into our own now swaying line, 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 the men of the Eleventh were not at all panic stricken. Getting themselves out of the line of fire they turned voluntarily, and shaking themselves clear of the dismounted cavalry, closed up their shattered line. In a minute they 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 dashed 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 over shooting, 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 we did, the rebels retiring with more rapidity than grace as we poured into their works.
Beyond the captured line we found 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 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 enfilading 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, snugly ensconced behind a difficult run, and hid from us by a stout growth of trees, left standing to mask their position, they swept our flank with a terrible fire. Efforts were made to dislodge 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. Suddenly fierce yells from the rebel lines announced that they were receiving reenforcements. The position was becoming serious.
As Colonel Hill and Major Baldwin had been badly wounded the command of the Regiment devolved on Captain Merrill of Company I. Our men were falling rapidly and those left were exhausted by the efforts they had made under a blazing sun, yet when a thin line of the Second Corps moved out of the woods behind us and advanced as if to support us in a charge we were to make by way of our left on the aggravating work on that flank, our men raised a glad hurrah and gathered their energies for a mighty rush. But, alas, the Second Corps men could not endure the murderous sweep of the fire the alert enemy poured upon them from their flanking position, and quickly melted back into the timber.
Movements in our front indicated a gathering of Confederates for an assault. Anticipating it somewhat, and its result, of which there could be but one, the colors of the regiments were sent to the rear, and the word was passed along the line that when broken the regiments were to rally at the line of rifle pits we had taken in the morning, where the men would find their colors planted. Then came the roar and rush of the assault, a minute of fierce firing and yelling, and we were flying back to the sheltering woods, a storm of bullets whistling around us.
A citizen seeing how badly we were broken, our men fleeing into the woods without apparent formation or visible control, would have sworn that none of us would have stopped short of the James River, but I don't believe that a man of ours anyway went back a foot further than the captured rifle pits. There we gathered on our colors, every man in his place, and as the enemy came dashing through the woods after a supposed-to-be flying foe they quickly learned what it was that Paddy gave the drum. Of D, Private Hanscom was killed this day, and Privates Day, Googing, Leighton, McGraw, Bubier and White were wounded.
While these operations were going on, 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 our cavalry had reached White Tavern, only seven miles from Richmond. Reenforcements reaching the Confederate cavalry, 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 further in the rear in their turn, all this time carrying their dead and wounded with them, the dead strapped across the led cavalry horses or in front of the troopers. Finally the hard pressed men reached the creek, behind which Gregg reestablished his line, Miles returning to Fussell's Mill to take position on the right flank of our corps. And 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, "Old Mass and Charge," proposed that we assault at five o'clock that afternoon, but the force the advance of his skirmish line developed made him abandon this idea. Besides, about then Gregg's line before Deep Creek was so strongly attacked as to compel him to cross the creek to the bank nearest us to sustain himself, it seeming clear enough that an advance would only bring us disaster. General Grant gave up the idea of pressing the movement further, determining though, 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 night of the 16th we took position close to the enemy's works and began to throw up intrenchments. By morning, working in relays, we had a strong line of works thrown up right under the enemy's nose. 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 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 General Grant allowed a flag of truce to be sent out and a truce arranged to continue from four to six o'clock. Perhaps, springing from this truce, there was an almost voluntary cessation of firing between the pickets until a little after five o'clock in the afternoon of the next day, the 18th, when it broke out with a fury that indicated a pending assault on us.