Whiskey was used as a medicine, but its value as such is problematical. As a restorative for men exhausted by labor or by battle, it has, no doubt, a good effect, but it should not be given until the work is done or the battle fought. It would have been a great advantage to the army if the commissioned officers had not been able to obtain supplies, for Dutch courage is a poor substitute for the real thing, and a clear head is even more important to him who commands than to him who has only to obey.
On the Weldon Railroad expedition, some of the men, by a mysterious instinct, discovered several barrels of apple-jack which had been concealed under a stack of hay, and many of the canteens were filled with spirit by the soldiers as they passed. Several of these, overcome by their potations, fell out of the line of our outward march, and probably to sleep off the fumes, stretched themselves out upon the broad veranda of a planter’s house. On the return march they were found there with their throats cut—dead—and the murder was avenged by the burning of the house. No doubt many more suffered for their excess by imprisonment in Southern barracoons.
The New Year of 1865 found the Regiment in log huts near the Jerusalem plank-road, a mile in the rear of our works before Petersburg, on swampy ground. The two wings of the battalion alternated in fatigue duty, building, extending, or strengthening works, the labor continuing day and night.
Suddenly on the afternoon of February 4, 1865, orders came to move the next morning (Sunday), at daylight. The general impression was that there was to be another raid on the railroad connections of the enemy, and the camp huts were left standing. At daylight on the 5th, the column started and sunset found us near to Nottoway Court House. We were ordered out on picket, but were recalled about midnight and marched until dawn, when we were at Hatcher’s run—the point where that stream is crossed by the Vaughn road.
The day before, the 2d Corps had been engaged with the enemy here, and the 32d was posted in some rifle pits on the further side of the Run, out of which the rebel forces had been driven. Our Regiment was the extreme right of the 5th Corps, and on its right connected with the left of the 2d Corps across the stream. About 2 o’clock P. M., Crawford’s division advanced from the left, moved across our front and encountered the enemy; two hours later our brigade was put in by General Warren to fill a gap in Crawford’s line, and the contest was sharp until about dusk, when the onset of a fresh body of the enemy drove back Crawford’s command in some confusion. The locality of the action was in a thick wood of pines where we could not see to any great distance, and as our part of the line held on, we found ourselves with the 155th Pennsylvania quite alone and flanked on both sides. It required considerable coolness and some sharp fighting to enable us to get back to the original line of battle, and our losses in doing so were heavy—74 in killed, wounded, and missing; included in which number was Major Shepard, who was made prisoner while commanding the brigade line of skirmishers, and Captain Bowdlear severely wounded. The action we named that of Dabney’s Mills.
Until the 11th we remained in the same position. The weather was very cold and stormy, and the enemy’s artillery at times very annoying, but no infantry attack was made. On the 11th the corps changed its line slightly, and we soon had a camp more comfortable than that we left on the Jerusalem road. Here we remained digging and picketing until we started out on the final campaign.
In the action of the 6th, Major Shepard commanded the skirmish line in front of our brigade. When Crawford advanced across our front, the pickets became useless and the Major proceeded to call them in and to join the brigade. While marching to the left, as he supposed in the rear of the Union line of battle, he happened into the gap which had just been made in Crawford’s command by a Confederate charge, and he suddenly found himself in the rear of the enemy; at the same moment he was struck in the head by a musket ball, which had just force enough to stretch him senseless on the ground. The Major recovered to find himself an object of interest to a half-dozen rebel stragglers, one of whom exchanged hats with him, another borrowed his nice overcoat, while others contented themselves with his various equipments. Perhaps Shepard did not recover full consciousness until the moment when one of the plunderers ordered him to take off and yield up his boots. But this was the feather too much. Those boots were new, elegant, and costly, and the Major made a stand in and for them, replying to all threats by the declaration that they couldn’t have the boots, and that he preferred death to the loss of them.
How the affair might have ended we cannot say, had not an officer appeared in sight, to whom the Major formally surrendered himself; but thereupon the stragglers left him with his boots and his life to boot, and both have given him much contentment since that day.