About eleven o'clock a. m. the confederates commenced a most determined onset on the 14th Corps at our left. It soon became evident that the enemy was gaining ground, as the firing came nearer and nearer, and the left kept falling back until the cannon shot from the enemy cut the limbs from the trees above us, and we expected every moment to hear the order "change front to rear." The corps to our left had fallen back to nearly at right angles with our line, and we could plainly see the wounded men being borne back or slowly straggling to the rear. There are times in the life of almost anyone when the circumstances with which he is surrounded are burned into his memory as though graven with a pen of fire. So on this occasion, although the enemy had been badly beaten in our front, we saw our line of battle momentarily crumbling away on our left. Visions of Libby, Salisbury and Andersonville came before us, and it did seem as though our fate was destruction or captivity. While intensely watching the progress of the battle on our left, all at once we saw the front of a column of men coming on the double-quick out of the woods in our rear. They advance nearly up to our position, they halt, and face to the left. We saw an officer on a white horse ride up to a color bearer. He takes the standard out of his hand, and with the grand old stars and stripes in one hand, his sword in the other, he gallops to the front; the ranks of blue follow fast their intrepid leader. Then was battle on in all the grandeur of its pomp and circumstance. No one single musket could be heard, but as some vast storm that comes sweeping on from the northwest with a roar that is appallingly sublime, mingled the volleys of the contending hosts, while the salvos of the artillery cause the earth to tremble as in the throes of an earthquake. Our line swings back, like a gate on its hinges, to its former position. But where is that glorious spirit that led that gallant charge that has saved us from capture and our army from certain defeat? An orderly is seen leading back the white horse "that carried his master into the fray," but no rider is there. "Wounded, but not mortally" is the word that is passed from lip to lip. And that brave Polish officer, General Turchin, still lives to receive the thanks and honors of his adopted countrymen. This was the same officer that rebelled against the old world tyranny and, in 1848, with Sigel, Willich, Schurz, Austerhause and many others, fought for liberty in the fatherland until fighting was hopeless; and for the liberty they could never win in their country came to ours; but, strange to say, not one of them ever drew his sword in the cause of the slaveholder's rebellion. Very many of them, as some one has truly said, "wrote their naturalization papers in their blood."
About two o'clock p. m. our brigade was relieved from the line where we had fought in the morning, and held in reserve, ready to be taken to any point on the line where our services might be most needed. The enemy, by the mistake that I have referred to before, had driven a portion of McCook's Corps from the field and entirely out of the battle, and had extended its left so far to the rear as to cut us off from a large spring that had furnished us with water the day before. From the time of this calamity in the morning we had no water, and the air was thick with the sulphurous smoke that created an intense thirst. The men were clamoring and insisting that someone should go for water. There was one member of our company, George Benton, that by his kindness of heart, and implicit and cheerful obedience to orders, had won the respect and confidence of his officers and the hearts of his fellow soldiers. In speech, modest and kindly, yet in the battle he had shown himself as brave as the bravest. George came to me loaded down with canteens, and asked permission to go to the rear and try to find water. I, with some emphasis, refused. The men at that set up a clamor, and insisted that they were suffering for want of water. I explained the hazardous nature of the enterprise. I assured them from the firing that our right was well turned, and that anyone going back, alone and unattended, was liable to be killed, wounded, or captured, which all dreaded more than death or wounds by reason of the inhuman treatment our soldiers received while in rebel prisons. I said to George, "I am afraid you will never come back." With a smile of determination lighting up that noble young face, he replied, "I will come back, captain, or I will be a dead Benton." I was not quite strong enough for the emergency. I made a mistake. That mistake cost George Benton his life. He never returned. Whether he fell by a stray bullet, in those deep woods and thickets, or whether he was captured and murdered in prison, I know not. The records of Salisbury and Andersonville were searched, after the war, but on none could the name of George Benton be found. After we had fallen back on Chattanooga letters came from his father and sisters, inquiring concerning the fate of son and brother. No one can know with what bitterness I reproached myself for allowing myself to be persuaded against my better judgment; and learning by that sad lesson—no member of company B was ever again reported "missing in action." I saw the father and sisters when we came back from the war, and told them what I had already written them before of the way George was lost; but "hope, like an anchor to the soul, sure and steadfast," would not suffer them to give up their dear boy as lost. They hoped that some day, like a lost mariner, he would come from perhaps captivity and sickness, to gladden their hearts and relieve the suspense that was crushing their lives. But twenty-seven autumns have returned since that brave boy was lost to sight in the smoke that covered that dread field of Chickamauga, but no tidings ever came of that one, who was gladly willing to risk his life to alleviate the sufferings of his comrades, and was permitted to do so by the weakness of his commanding officer.
At about four o'clock p. m. our attention was drawn to the heavy firing on our extreme right, and we conjectured that our Reserve Corps was being brought into action. It proved to be true. General Granger came up and with his corps that had known but little, if anything, of the disasters of the day, charged the enemy with the force and effect of victors.
But it seemed it was not the purpose of General Thomas to contend for the field of battle, and to General Granger's Corps was assigned the duty of covering the retreat of the balance of the army.
It was Wellington (whom his comrades loved to call the "Iron Duke") that said at the battle of Waterloo, "would that sundown or Blücher had come." And never did sundown hang his somber curtain over a more grateful body of men than those that remained of the Army of the Cumberland. Just as the sun began to cast the long shadows to the eastward our brigade was retired to the west for about half a mile, still in order of battle; but any one could discern that a general retreat was to be commenced as soon as the friendly darkness should cover us from the view of the enemy. While in this position we heard cheers from what seemed to be a great body of men, and the rumor was at once out that General Burnside had reinforced us from Knoxville. We answered the cheers as heartily as our tired bodies and depressed spirits would permit, and the sky was ablaze with the rockets that shot up from the direction from which we had heard the cheering. Mendenhall's battery of Rodman guns was at that time just in our front. He ordered his men to load with canister, and then I heard him remark "that is the last round of ammunition this battery has."
Some one out toward the skirmish line heard the order "Ninth Louisiana, forward, double-quick, march," and pretty effectually dispelled the delusion that the cheering and rocket party were our friends under General Burnside. It was now quite dark, and tired, depressed and supperless, we commenced the march that meant that the battlefield, with all its treasures of our dead heroes, was to be abandoned to the tender mercies of an enemy that looked upon us as invaders and destroyers of their rights and liberties. It was, indeed, a sad hour. Two days before we had gone into this conflict with full ranks and high hopes of victory. Now we were "silently stealing away" under cover of the darkness, like dastardly assassins, when, in fact, we were there in the holy cause of liberty for all men, and for the union of the states as against rebellion and treason. We were leaving our beloved dead, uncomposed, unburied, with nothing to mark the spot where they fell, with no place of sepulture, with no requiem, save the soughing of the south wind through the banners of the majestic pines, or the nightly songs of the sweet voiced southern mocking bird.
"We carved not a line, we raised not a stone,
But we left them alone in their glory."
We drew away into the defiles of the hills, and the glad sound of the splashing of the horses' hoofs in the little streams that trickled from the hillsides, then the scraping of the tin cups could be heard (the efforts of the boys to get a drink of the muddy hoof-trodden water); but straining it through the teeth, no nectar quaffed by the fabled gods of old ever tasted so refreshing as did that grand beverage of nature to those battle-stained soldiers that night.
Of the route we marched that night I never had the least information; but when the sun arose over the mountains of North Carolina, the twenty-first day of September, it looked down upon the old army in order of battle on the summit of Missionary Ridge. All day we kept this position, but the confederates wanted no more fighting on this occasion, and, you can believe me, they had my entire sympathies.