In our new position on the afternoon of Sunday, the third day's battle, we were subjected to a continuous fire of skirmishers and sharpshooters, without the ability of replying. We laid up logs for a barricade and protected ourselves as well as we could. Several were wounded during the afternoon, among them Captain Hall, of Company I. His was a most singular wound. We were all lying prone upon the ground, when suddenly he spoke rather sharply and said he had got a clip on his knee. He said it was an insignificant flesh wound, but his leg was benumbed. He tried to step on it, but could not bear his weight on it, and very soon it became exceedingly painful, and his ankle swelled to double its natural size. He was taken back to one of the hospitals, where it was found a minie-ball had entered his leg above the knee and passed down between the bones to the ankle, where it was removed. This practically ended the service of one of the youngest of our captains, a brave and brilliant young officer.
Towards night a cold, drizzling rain set in, which chilled us to our bones. We could not have any fires, not even to make our coffee, for fear of disclosing our position to the enemy. For four days now we had been continuously under the terrible nervous strain incident to a battle and practically without any rest or sleep. During this time we had no cooked food, nothing but hardtack and raw pork and coffee but once. This condition began to tell upon us all. I had been under the weather when the movement began, and was ordered by our surgeon to remain behind, but I said no, not as long as I could get around. Now I found my strength had reached its limit, and I took that officer's advice, with the colonel's orders, and went back to the division field hospital to get under cover from the rain and get a night's sleep if possible.
I found a half-dozen hospital tents standing together as one hospital, and all full to overflowing with sick and wounded men. Our brigade surgeon, a personal friend, was in charge. He finally found a place for me just under the edge of one of the tents, where I could keep part of the rain off. He brought me a stiff dose of whiskey and quinine, the universal war remedy, and I drank it and lay down, and was asleep in less time than it takes me to write it.
About midnight the surgeon came and aroused me with the information that the army was moving back across the river, and that all in the hospital who could march were ordered to make their way back as best they could; that of the others the ambulances would carry all they could and the others would be left. This was astounding information. My first impulse was, of course, to return to my regiment, but the doctor negatived that emphatically by saying, "You are under my orders here, and my instructions are to send you all directly back to the ford and across the river; and then the army is already on the march, and you might as well attempt to find a needle in a haystack as undertake to find your regiment in these woods in this darkness." If his first reason had not been sufficient, the latter one was quite convincing. I realized at once the utter madness of any attempt to reach the regiment, at the same time that in this night tramp back over the river, some eight miles, I had a job that would tax my strength to the utmost. The doctor had found one of the men of our regiment who was sick, and bidding us help each other started us back over the old plank-road.
How shall I describe the experiences of that night's tramp? The night was intensely dark and it was raining hard. The plank-road was such only in name. What few remnants remained of the old planks were rotten and were a constant menace to our footing. I must have had more than a dozen falls during that march from those broken planks, until face, arms, and legs were a mass of bruises. We were told to push forward as rapidly as we could to keep ahead of the great rabble of sick and wounded which was to follow immediately. This we tried to do, though the road was now crowded with the occupants of the other hospitals already on their way. These men were all either sick or wounded, and were making their way with the greatest difficulty, most of them in silence, but there was an occasional one whose tongue gave expression to every possible mishap in outbursts of the most shocking profanity. There were enough of these to make the night hideous.
Our road was a track just wide enough to admit a single wagon through the densest jungle of timber and undergrowth I ever saw. I cannot imagine the famed jungles of Africa more dense or impenetrable, and it seemed to be without end as we wearily plodded on hour after hour, now stepping into a hole and sprawling in the mud, again stumbling against a stolid neighbor and being in turn jostled by him, with an oath for being in his way. Many a poor fellow fell, too exhausted to rise, and we were too nearly dead to do more than mechanically note the fact.
Towards morning a quartette of men overtook us carrying a man on their shoulders. As they drew near us one of the forward pair stumbled and fell, and down came the body into the mud with a swash. If the body was not dead, the fall killed it, for it neither moved nor uttered a sound. With a fearful objurgation they went on and left it, and we did not have life enough left in us to make any investigation. It was like the case of a man on the verge of drowning seeing others perishing without the ability to help. It was a serious question whether we could pull ourselves through or should be obliged to drop in our tracks, to be run over and crushed or trampled to death, as many a poor fellow was that night. We had not an ounce of strength, nor had any of the hundreds of others in our condition, to bestow on those who could not longer care for themselves. Here it was every man for himself. This night's experience was a horrible nightmare.
It was long after daylight when we crawled out of those woods and reached United States ford. Here a pontoon bridge had been thrown over, and a double column of troops and a battery of artillery were crossing at the same time. We pushed ourselves into the throng, as to which there was no semblance of order, and were soon on the other side. On the top of the bluff, some one hundred feet above the river, on our side, we noticed a hospital tent, and we thought if we could reach that we might find shelter and rest, for it was still raining and we were drenched to the skin, and so cold that our faces were blue and our teeth chattered. A last effort landed us at this hospital. Alas for our hopes! it was crowded like sardines in a box with others who in like condition had reached it before us. I stuck my head in the tent. One glance was enough. The surgeon in charge, in answer to our mute appeal, said, "God help you, boys; I cannot. But here is a bottle of whiskey, take a good drink; it will do you good." We took a corking dose, nearly half the bottle, and lay down, spoon fashion, my comrade and I, by the side of that tent in the rain and slept for about an hour, until the stimulus of the liquor passed off and the cold began again to assert itself, when we had to start on again. I have never had any use for liquors in my life, and the use of them in any form as a beverage I consider as nothing else than harmful in the highest degree, yet I have always felt that this big dose of whiskey saved my life. Could we have had a good cup of hot coffee at that time it would possibly have been better, but we might as well have looked for lodgings in the Waldorf-Astoria as for coffee at that time and place. Imagine my feelings during all this night as I reflected that I had a good horse, overcoat, and gum blanket somewhere,—yes, somewhere, back, or wherever my regiment might be,—and here I was soaking wet, chilled to the bones and almost dead from tramping.
We got word at the Ford that the troops were to go back to their old camps, and there was nothing for us to do but to make our way back there as best we might. Soon after we started Colonel (afterwards Judge Dana, of Wilkes-Barre) Dana's regiment passed. The colonel hailed me and kindly inquired why I happened to be there by myself on foot, said I looked most wretched, and insisted on my taking another bracer from a little emergency stock he had preserved. I had been but a few months out of his law office, from which I had been admitted to the bar. His kindly attentions under these limited circumstances were very cheering and helpful. We were all day covering the eight or more miles back to camp. But early in the day the rain ceased, the sun came out, we got warmed up marching, and after some hours our clothes became sufficiently dry to be more comfortable, so that when we reached camp in the evening our condition was much improved. This was due in part probably as much to the relief from the awful nervous strain of the battle and the conditions through which we had passed in that wilderness as to rest and the changed weather. When we reached this side of the river that nervous strain ceased. We were sure that fighting was over, at least for the present. We found the regiment had been in camp some hours ahead of us. Our corps was probably on the march when we left the hospital, and had preceded us all the way back. I found my horse had brought back one of our wounded men, and this was some compensation for my own loss.
We had been gone on this campaign from the 29th of April until the 5th of May, and such a week! How much that was horrible had been crowded into it. For variety of experiences of the many dreadful sides of war, that week far exceeded any other like period of our service. The fighting was boy's play compared with either Antietam or Fredericksburg, yet for ninety-six hours continuously we were under the terrible nervous strain of battle. Our losses in this action were comparatively light, 2 men killed, 2 officers wounded (one of whom died a few days later), and 39 men wounded, and one man missing; total loss, 44, or about fifteen per cent. of the number we took into action. This missing man I met at the recent reunion of our regiment. He was picked up from our skirmish line by that flanking party of rebels on the third day's fight described in my last. The circumstance will show how close the rebels were upon us before we discovered them. Our skirmishers could not have been more than a dozen yards in advance of our main line, yet the thicket was so dense that the enemy was on him before he fairly realized it. He said he was placed with a lot of other prisoners and marched to the rear some distance, under guard, when a fine-looking Confederate officer rode up to them. He was told it was General Lee. He said he wore long, bushy whiskers and addressed them with a cheery,—