"In conjunction with Stuart's horse artillery it was our mission to meet Burnside's movement against General Lee's right wing, resting on the Rappahannock. With the exception of brief intervals, to let the guns cool, we ceased firing only once during the entire day, and this was to move about a hundred yards for a more effective position. Excepting the few minutes this occupied, our guns and limber-chests remained in the same position all day, the caissons plying steadily between the ordnance-train and the battle line, to keep up the stock of ammunition. I do not recall the number of casualties, but our losses were heavy. When we came to make the change of position mentioned above, more than half the horses were unable to take a single step. One of the drivers, Fuller, was lying on the ground, his head toward the enemy. A shell entered the crown of his head and exploded in his body! Not long after this I heard some one calling me, and, looking back, I saw 'Doc' Montgomery prostrate. I ran to him and, stooping at his side, began to examine his wound. 'There is nothing you can do for me,' he said; 'I am mortally wounded, and can live but a little while. Take a message for my mother.' (His mother was a widow.) 'When the battle is over, write and tell her how I died—at my post—like a man—and ready to give my life for the cause. Now, Frazer, pray for me.' When the brief prayer was ended I resumed my place at the gun. It was about this time, I think, that Pelham came up and said, 'Well, you men stand killing better than any I ever saw.' A little later, just after sunset, I received two severe wounds myself, one of them disabling my right arm for life; and so I had to commit brave 'Doc's' dying message for his mother to other hands."
The third and fourth pieces, twenty-pound Parrott guns, were on the hill west of the railroad, and there Lieutenant Baxter McCorkle, Randolph Fairfax and Arthur Robinson were killed, and Edward Alexander lost an arm. This section of the battery was exposed to a fire unsurpassed in fierceness during the war. The ground, when it arrived, was already strewn with dead horses and wrecked batteries, and two horses that were standing, with holes in their heads through which daylight could be seen, were instantly killed by other shots intended for our guns.
Captain Poague told me since, that the orders General Jackson gave him as he came to the place were, "to fire on the enemy's artillery till it became too hot for him, and then to turn his guns on their infantry," and that he, Poague, had stated this in his official report, and the chief of artillery of the corps, before forwarding the report, had asked him if he was sure that these were General Jackson's orders. He told him he was. The report was then endorsed and so forwarded.
The scene, as described at the close of this battle near nightfall, was a melancholy one. As the two sections of the battery, which had separated and gone to different portions of the field in the morning—the one to the heights, the other to the plain—met again, on the caissons of each were borne the dead bodies of those of their number who had fallen, the wounded, and the harness stripped from the dead horses. The few horses that had survived, though scarcely able to drag the now empty ammunition-chests, were thus again burdened.
After going into bivouac and the dead had been buried, to clear the ground for a renewal of the battle on the following day, the wagon-horses had to be brought into requisition. These were driven in pairs to the position on the bluff and, as lights would attract the fire of the enemy, the dead horses had to be found in the darkness, and with chains dragged to the rear. The approach of the first instalment to a line of infantry, through which it had to pass and who were roused from sleep by the rattling of chains and the dragging of the ponderous bodies through brush and fallen timber, created no little excitement, and a wide berth was given the gruesome procession. By midnight the work had been accomplished.
At dawn of the following day a fresh detachment of men and horses having been furnished by another battery for the fourth piece, our battery again went into position. There it remained inactive throughout the day, while the enemy's dead within our lines were being buried by their own men under flag of truce. On the night which followed, as the two armies lay under arms, confronting each other, a display of the aurora borealis, of surpassing splendor and beauty, was witnessed. At such times, from time immemorial, "shooting-stars", comets, and the movements of the heavenly bodies have been observed with profoundest interest as presaging good or evil. On this occasion, with the deep impress of what had just been experienced and the apprehension of an even more determined conflict on the day next to dawn, it can readily be imagined that minds naturally prone to superstition were thrilled with emotions and conjectures aroused by the sight. At any rate, these "northern lights," reinforced by the memory of the fearful carnage so recently suffered, seem to have been interpreted as a summons home—as the Northern hosts, like the shifting lights, had vanished from view when daylight appeared.
In January, 1863, with William McClintic, of our company, I returned to the army, which was in winter-quarters near Guiney's Station in Caroline County.
After arriving in a box-car at this station, about midnight, during a pouring rain, we found one section of the battery camped three miles from Port Royal. The other section, to which I belonged, was on picket twelve miles beyond—at Jack's Hill, overlooking Port Tobacco Bay. The section near Port Royal had comfortable winter-quarters on a hillside and was well sheltered in pine woods; and, as most of my mess were in this section, I was allowed to remain until the contents of my box brought from home were consumed. One night soon after my arrival, while making a visit to members of another mess, Abner Arnold, one of my hosts, pointing to a large, dark stain on the tarpaulin which served as the roof of their shanty, said, "Have you any idea what discolored that place?" As I had not, he said, "That's your blood; that is the caisson-cover on which you were hauled around at Sharpsburg—and neither rain nor snow can wash it out."
The infantry of the Stonewall Brigade was in camp seven miles from us, toward the railroad. Having ridden there one morning for our mail, I met two men in one of their winter-quarters streets. One of them, wearing a citizen's overcoat, attracted my attention. Then, noticing the scars on his face, I recognized my former messmate, Wash. Stuart, on his return to the battery for the first time since his fearful wound at Winchester the preceding May. His companion was Capt. Willie Randolph, of the Second Virginia Regiment, both of whom will be mentioned later.
The chief sport of the troops in their winter-quarters was snowballing, which was conducted on regular military principles. Two brigades would sometimes form in line of battle, commanded by their officers, and pelt each other without mercy. In one such engagement a whole brigade was driven pell-mell through its camp, and their cooking utensils captured by their opponents.