It was early in the morning of the 17th when the march was resumed, and at 9 a. m. we halted in the rear of breastworks, our entire route having been enlivened by the sound of firing, more or less vigorous, indicating a resumption of the days at Spottsylvania and Cold Harbor. Moreover, Massachusetts men do not forget that it is the 17th of June, and noise they had grown to think a regular accompaniment of that illustrious date. We are at the Union left and massed in the rear of the Ninth Corps, under Burnside, and the duty of our Corps is to act as a support of the Ninth if needed. We are about two miles from Petersburg and from many points the city is plainly seen. The cupola of Dinwiddie County Court House will be a target for Union artillery during many coming months. Lying in the breastworks through the day and night, we were exposed to the missiles of the enemy; Lieut Wyman of "H" and Captain Willard Kinsley of "K" as well as others were wounded. Unless he could sleep in the direst confusion there was no closing of the eyelids during this first night in front of Petersburg. In this memorable siege, the 18th of June is a notable date, for then there was concerted action along the entire line, though not in such uniform time and order as General Meade desired. It was a bloody day in which a vigorous effort was made to force the rebel lines before the arrival of help from the Northward. This might have been done earlier in the day, but, before the advance could be made, re-inforcements had arrived to nearly, if not quite, equal the number of the Union soldiers, and General Meade's orders were to hold what had been gained and to fortify immediately. The casualties of the four days, 15th-18th, footed up nearly two thousand killed and more than eight thousand wounded, the charges of this 18th day ending assaults on intrenched positions. The work of the Fifth Corps is thus described by a war correspondent:
"On the left of the Ninth was the Fifth Corps, in the following order of divisions: from right to left—Crawford (3), Griffin (1), Cutler (4), Ayers (2). At early morning the advance was made and the enemy's withdrawal discovered. The Corps then prepared for a new advance, meanwhile keeping up a fierce fire of infantry and artillery. At noon, simultaneously with the attack of the Second Corps, a determined and vigorous advance was made. The ground to be crossed was generally open and cultivated, slightly rolling, and here and there artificially prepared with abatis, as well as naturally defended by undergrowth. The advance was against the south side of the Norfolk Railroad, and was partially, but not fully successful. In the evening again, at the time of Mott's attack in the centre (when the First Maine Heavy Artillery was so badly cut up) Griffin's and Cutler's divisions once more assaulted with great vigor. But here as before the labor was lost. The enemy foiled all our desperate endeavors."
The advance of the First Brigade, Third Division, is made at daybreak and we find the enemy missing. We are passing over surface which was fighting ground yesterday and last night; encountering the dead in both blue and gray, a most gruesome sight, at the same time driving back the rebel skirmishers until we come in sight of the Confederate earthworks, when we halt and throw up works for our own protection. Even danger and death can not wipe out human or, at least, boyish nature. Near the brief halting place are mulberry trees, fairly black with luscious, well ripened fruit, and not even rebel riflemen can keep Yankee berry-pickers out of those tempting branches. We soon advance, however, across a field and towards a railroad-cut some distance ahead of us, and to reach it we have to run the risk of the foe's rifles and cannon, snugly entrenched beyond the cut. We make a rush for this cut and the tumbles that some of the men take in entering it are funny even in battle's din. Colonel Davis's well known avoirdupois gained such momentum in the rapid rush that halting on the brink was quite impossible, and he rolled rapidly down the declivity. There is skirmishing all day and an artillery duel in the afternoon. Just at dark, a rapid movement is made across a ravine and orders are quietly passed that when the Colonel's hat is raised on the point of his sword, we are to rush forward to the edge of a bank, so near and yet so far below the rebel works that they cannot depress their cannon sufficiently to hit us. Officers are summoned later to brigade headquarters where they are informed that there will be a night attack, but, for some reason, changes come in the programme and in a new position we again throw up breastworks. In an exposed condition, we lie in them through the night and are saluted in the morning of Sunday, the 19th, by the enemy's fire at closer range.
The 19th falls on Sunday, though the particular day of the week gives these soldiers very little concern, since each successive twenty-four-hours is only one day more of "smoke and roar and powder-stench" and of this particular interval, General Warren has only the words, "Remained in position. Loss about three hundred." If remaining in position brought such a record as this, what would it have been had there been another effort to advance? The night before had seen very vigorous work in the trenches and men tried to strengthen them against possible attack, and so close were the workman to each other and so emphatic their strokes, George A. Farrar of "E" was wounded in the knee by a pickaxe and was obliged to go to the hospital. Nothing in the world finds more ready and willing workers than the throwing up of breastworks that may be used for defense and, under the spur of hostile missiles, the laziest become most industrious. At such times there are no suggestions that the other fellow ought to do it, but everyone is doing something, if it is no more than loosening earth with a bayonet or case-knife and throwing up the results with a cup or tin-plate, hoping thus to stop a vagrant bullet. Continuous rattle of musketry recalls the noise of the Wilderness and, with the evident skill of the sharpshooters, it behooves everyone to lie low. Writes one poor fellow, somewhat discouraged,
June 19, '64 "When shall we get through this terrible campaign?" Another says, "The Thirty-ninth is about five hundred yards (others put the distance as low as eighty yards) from the Confederate works and our skirmishers are on a hillside, across a ravine. At nightfall, we begin on the works again." This, doubtless, is the point referred to by Captain Porter, years afterward, when at a reunion of the Regiment, he said, "our skirmishers were among the first to establish the line at what was afterward the Crater, blown up on the 30th of July, 1864, and that line was pushed nearest to the rebel line, not excepting that of Fort Stedman and Fort McGilvery, by twenty yards."
Of the 20th, an officer records, "We worked till two o'clock last night, and turned out at four this morning. The rebel sharpshooters are on the lookout for a man careless enough to show himself. I am twenty-four years old to-day." Another scribe in the same company enters these words, "Wish I were at home to-day for it is our boy's birthday," so closely does the absent soldier keep in heart and mind to the loved ones at the hearthstone. While there is a trend towards the west, General Griffin's Division (First) reaching the Jerusalem plank-road and the Second Corps crossing it, our portion of the Fifth Corps, except as a part of the Brigade moves off to the left to help fill the gap made by the withdrawal of Griffin, remains as before. The 21st varies little from yesterday, men keeping pretty closely to their places, the least exposure bringing attention from the enemy, and men are wounded in spite of all care to the contrary. One of Burnside's colored regiments is digging a traverse out to the picket line. Extreme vigilance continues into the night, through fear of an assault by the enemy, and at about 9 p. m., the most of the Regiment goes on picket. Picket duty on the 22nd requires vigilance, "Yank" and "Reb" exchange compliments whenever opportunity offers and Jonas P. Barden, Company A, is killed. Quite late in the evening, the Regiment is relieved and retires to its former location, the same being not remote from the spot which in a few weeks would be known as the "Crater," and somewhat further to the Union left, opposite prominencies will be called Forts Sedgwick and Mahone, or in army parlance, Forts "Hell and Damnation." It is on this day that the Second Corps suffers one of the severest set backs in its entire history, the enemy succeeding in getting at its left flank, in a manner unprecedented, and in carrying off four cannon and more than two thousand prisoners.
Everyone is learning caution, but there are mortalities still, as with S. B. Harris of "H" who is hit in the head and killed on the 23rd. It is fair to suppose that Union sharpshooters are just as vigilant as their opponents, and that Death visits, with no show of partiality, both blue and gray. As the stay in these advanced trenches has not savored at all of rest, any change seems desirable, hence orders to move early in the morning of the 24th are heard with pleasure and, before daylight, we are off to the left to take the places of Second Corps men who had gone still further to the left, while the Ninth Corps moves into our vacated places. One very careful observer states that we lost our way and had to back and fill, as it were, at one time coming near running into the enemy, who kept up an almost constant shelling during the change. There seems to be less activity among the sharpshooters, for which the soldiers are duly grateful. To-day the original members of the Twelfth Massachusetts, the Fletcher Webster Regiment, long in the Second Brigade of our Division, draw out of line and start for home. The recruits, re-enlisted and drafted men of the Twelfth are to become a part of the Thirty-ninth. The coming into our ranks of one hundred and twenty-five men from the returning Twelfth, is the crowning incident of the 25th. One hundred and six more men are nominally transferred, but they are absent on sick leave, in rebel prisons or elsewhere, and those received to-day, represent about all the real additions to come from our friends who, after three June 24, '64 years of arduous labor, are homeward bound. The new position of the Regiment is across the Petersburg & Norfolk Railroad and the depleted condition of the 39th, following the campaign, is evident from the fact that eighteen of the men from the Twelfth Regiment, added to those left in Company C of the Thirty-ninth, called for just forty three rations in the entire company.
It was not lack of excitement which prompted a certain Company A man to a prank which afforded him and his comrades a deal of pleasure, rather was it a desire for something out of the ordinary that, in the midst of this, the severest campaign in the progress of the war, suggested to him a variation. Taking pencil and paper, he wrote, "I should be happy to correspond with any young lady so disposed; address G. W. Cheney, Company A, 39th Regt., M. V. M., Second Brigade, Third Division, Fifth Army Corps, Army of the Potomac." Thinking the idea too good to be kept secret, he read it to the boys around the campfire who were delighted with the plan and he had to write another, couched thus, "I would be pleased to correspond with young ladies, 18 to 22, with view to matrimony." Both of the ads were sent to the Boston Herald and the writer thinks they were the first of the kind ever inserted there. Two weeks later, or after the ads had had time to circulate, the mail brought one hundred and six answers, representing every state then in the Union; long letters, short and pithy ones, some perfumed and embossed; no end of good advice, love, kisses, merry, sporting fun and blessings; it was understood that the Colonel's good wife was quite horrified at seeing the ad and there must have been some uxorious advice to Colonel Davis since, though the next mail had over two hundred letters for the advertisers, they were all destroyed on the pretext that there were no such persons in the Regiment as those addressed. This however did not prevent the enterprising young men doing extensive corresponding over their own names.