The severest regimental loss in the war between France and Germany fell upon the Sixteenth German Infantry at Mars-le-Tour. Forty-nine per cent of their number were killed, wounded, or missing. But the German regiments are three thousand strong, comparable only to our brigades. And this sacrifice of the brave Germans brings to mind the strikingly similar one of my old comrades of the Vermont Brigade at the battle of the Wilderness.
Brigades in our army were commonly composed of half-a-dozen regiments more or less, often from widely separated States; but there were exceptions. The Sixth Army Corps would scarcely have known itself without the Jersey Brigade in its first division, and the Vermont Brigade in its second. Both became famous, and their integrity as exclusively State organisations was broken only once, when for nearly a year the regiment in which I served was brigaded with the Vermonters. It was not a kind or judicious act on the part of the military authorities to assign us thus, but I shall always think it a piece of good fortune that I once marched and fought with those Green Mountain men, and friendships made among them are cherished still.
The brigade was like a great family whose consciousness of proud and romantic traditions and whose singular cohesiveness reminded one of the Scottish Clans. But its material was most thoroughly American. The men had the qualities of mountaineers, their reserve, independence, and resourcefulness, and among the officers were men of high character and culture, some of whom, like Senator Proctor, have since become distinguished in civil life.
Stalwart fellows those Vermonters were; above the average in both intelligence and stature, tireless on the march, cool, bitter, and persistent fighters.
At well named Savage's Station, one of their regiments had been badly cut up in an affair which did highest credit to its grit and discipline, but at the time when we were with them the brigade as a whole had become noted rather for losses inflicted on the enemy than for those suffered. None who saw and shared in it, can ever forget their wonderful fight at Bank's Ford, where at surprisingly small cost to themselves they repulsed and fearfully punished Early's Confederate division and saved the Sixth Corps from black disaster.
But such reputations were perilous in our army. The demand for sacrifice was sure to reach men like these. A year and a day from the time when they threw off Early's flank attack at Bank's Ford, the Vermonters found themselves in the midst of the bloody storm-centre of the most weird, confused, and difficult of the battles of the Army of the Potomac.
"The Wilderness" is a region the like of which can be found only along the Southern Atlantic seaboard. For miles, abrupt ridges of clay or gravel cut with ragged ravines are covered with dense growth of woods and brush; now scraggy oak, now hedge-like thickets of dwarf pine,—a gloomy, intricate, intractable region.
But its very difficulties were Lee's advantage. His men knew the Wilderness; many of them had grown up within it or on its borders. His plan of battle was simple, daring, and full of peril to his foes.
The road southward from the Fords of the Rapidan by which Grant's army was compelled to move leads through this region. In the midst of the forest the north and south road is crossed by two others running nearly east and west. Down these intersecting roads Lee poured his columns, striving to strike the dangerously extended Union line in flank, break it into fragments, and while entangled in the Wilderness play havoc with it.
At the most important of these road-junctions, at the vital point of the Union line, the position which must be held at any cost, on the afternoon of the fifth of May Getty's Division of the Sixth Corps was posted with the Vermont Brigade in front. They await the arrival of Hancock with the Second Corps, hoping then to push the enemy, now retarded in their advance by skirmishers and by the difficult nature of the ground, away from the danger-point, back into more open country where more even battle can be had. General Grant grows impatient; he orders Getty to attack at once without waiting for Hancock. The narrow road is the only place where artillery can be used. It is occupied by a battery; the infantry brigades must feel and fight their way through the thicket on either side. Suddenly the opposing lines meet. Volleys leap like sheaves of lightning from the brush, men fall by scores, there are charges and counter-charges; but in that Wilderness maze where foes phantom-like appear and disappear the bayonet is useless. The battle settles down to a grim trial of endurance. To stand up is death; the opposing lines, only a few yards distant from each other, lie down and fight close to the ground. Neither can advance, because neither will give way. The men of the South, on their native heath, taking advantage of every foot of familiar ground, creeping up here or there where smallest advantage appears, are bent on hewing a path to the Brock Road. The Vermonters, upon whom now the weight of the battle is falling, will not yield an inch. Then was seen the close clanship of those men of the Green Mountains. Like brothers their five regiments stick together, each ready to help each without confusion, with quick comprehension of every emergency, cool, desperate, deadly in the blows they give a common enemy. But their ranks are melting mournfully in the savage heat of the weird combat; from the Vermont officers especially the Southern rifles are taking ghastly toll; for while the men fight lying down, the officers must be on their feet moving from place to place along the line. One who was there with them says, "One after another of the officers fell not to rise again, or was borne bleeding to the rear. The men's faces grew powder-grimed and their mouths black from biting cartridges; the musketry silenced all sounds, and the air of the woods was hot and heavy with sulphurous vapour; the tops of the bushes were cut away by the leaden storm that swept through them."