General Kearney went in with us as we advanced into and through the cornfield; he rode along beside the colonel. When we got to within about four rods of the fence, the colonel was sure he saw soldiers move behind the fence and said to Kearney, “There is a Rebel line of battle behind that fence.” “No, there isn’t,” said Kearney and spurred his horse forward to get a nearer view. As he got to within a rod and a half or two rods of the fence, the Johnnies opened fire and General Kearney was one of the first to be killed at that time.
When I began to hunt about for the boys, Billy Morrow was one of the first I run across. We soon found others and then the colors. Billy and I then thought of one of our friends, a fellow by the name of Bradish, a Company E man, who was hit in the wood. Billy had seen him at about the same time I did as we came out of the wood, and believing we were near the place, we started out to see if we could find him. Bradish had been one of the nine who had played ball at Newport News, and we were both very fond of him. We thought he was badly wounded and wondered if we could not find him and do something for him. It took but a few minutes to find the place. Then began the lone search. The last I saw of Bradish was as we neared the edge of the wood coming out. He was hobbling along trying to keep up with us. I did not know where he was hit, but I thought in the thigh or about the hip, for one of his legs seemed quite powerless. There were a number of dead men lying about but we were unprepared to believe our comrade was dead, but when we examined the dead men we found Bradish was one of them. We found a place under a great pine tree; we dug a shallow grave and buried him near the place where he fell. We put a stone at each end of the grave, carved his initials on the trunk of the tree and left there one of our beloved comrades and one of the best soldiers in the regiment.
The expression on his face I shall never forget, it was so changed and so painful. Had we not been searching for him and turned him over, for as he lay his face was partially concealed, and so got a good view of it, I should not have recognized him. He had probably died soon after we left him as we started on the advance into the cornfield, for he was entirely cold. The face of Pat. Martin, as I saw him after he was killed at the Battle of Newbern, was entirely expressionless; he was shot through the brain and probably never knew what hit him. The Confederate who died while I was gone to get him a canteen of water, the morning after the Battle of Bethseda Church had a rather peaceful and happy expression on his face. Many of the men I helped to bury after the Battle of Fredericksburg had drawn, distressed, painful expressions on their faces; some of them gave one the impression that they had suffered the most intense agony just before death. I never watched a man die who was killed in battle—the private soldier is too busy to watch his best friend die at such a time. In this Battle of Chantilly, the losses in killed, wounded and prisoners in the regiment were 140, the heaviest loss we had sustained, in a single battle, up to this time. Three of our finest officers were killed; Lieutenant-Colonel Rice, Captain Fraser and Captain Kelton. We felt the loss of these men very deeply; but the worst thing about the whole matter was, we felt we had been sacrificed to no purpose. Every one felt that had General Reno been with us it would all have been different, but he was sick back to the rear in an ambulance off duty, and with him absent everything went wrong. General Kearney seems to have been entirely off his base that night; the way he ranted and swore around there was disgusting.
The fault in the wood seems to have been that the officers of the 21st did not keep in touch with the 51st New York, and wandered off no one knew where.
At roll call the next morning, September 2, there was but a shadow of the 21st present. After a while we started for Alexandria, moving very slowly, marching and halting by turns, the roads being choked with artillery and trains. During one of these halts, as we lay beside the road, a thing occurred which showed the stuff at least one boy of that army was made of. There was a boy in our company by the name of Harding Witt. Harding was a Dana boy. I had known him a long time and I knew him well. We had been school companions and had enjoyed fishing excursions together many a time.
Harding was on the picket line at the time of the fight in the wood and so was absent from the company. But late at night after the fight was all over I heard he had been wounded. I heard nothing more and saw nothing of him until the next day when halted in the road on our way back to Alexandria, I saw some one approaching. He had no gun and no knapsack; he had a canteen, his right sleeve was slit up and I could see a white bandage on the arm. The same could be seen on one of his legs. The trouser’s leg was slit up and a bandage could be seen on the leg. He also had a bandage on his head. As he approached nearer I recognized Harding. He came up and as we shook hands I said to him: “Well, Harding, they called for you last night.” “Yes, Mad,” said he, “they called for me five times but I am all right.” That boy had been hit five times, in the wood the night before, but he wasn’t taken prisoner nor was he in the hospital. He was, however, obliged to go to the hospital later.
We moved back to the vicinity of Alexandria and went into camp where we stayed until September 4th. During those days a number of the boys found their way back to the regiment. They had strayed away after the fight, some of them perhaps, making as famous runs as were made by some of the soldiers after the first Battle of Bull Run.
Among those to return at that time was our beloved surgeon, Dr. Cutter. Imagine our surprise and delight one afternoon on seeing him march into camp. When the Confederates were ready to move on, he was set at liberty and had made his way back to Alexandria where we were in camp. To us, he seemed to have risen from the dead. The officers of the first brigade had reported him among the killed, and that report had been accepted by the men of the regiment, and to see the old hero again so unexpectedly, startled us.
If I remember rightly, it was in this campaign, as we were falling back along the east side of the Rappahannock River, I first noticed a colored man, we later called Jeff Davis, hanging around the cook’s quarters trying to make himself useful. He would gather wood for the cook’s fire, tote the water, and on the march help carry the cooking utensils. In due time it was discovered that Jeff was an important acquisition to the company. He was good natured and just as willing to do things for the other boys as for the cook. Jeff Davis was a runaway slave, middle-aged, medium sized, wore top boots with his trousers tucked in, his shirt front was never buttoned either at the throat or lower down. His hat of black felt looked as if it had been thrown at him and he had caught it on one corner of his head. He had an easy going, rollicking gait and laugh, and was as full of fun as an egg is full of meat. Still, Jeff was full of business, too, and when, later on, he became company cook, the cooking was never better done, or the interests of the company more carefully guarded than by him, and it was as cook of Company K we realized his supreme usefulness and worth. Acting as a sort of company treasurer, when the company was paid off, he would pass around the hat and nearly every fellow would throw in a half a dollar or a dollar. Nothing would be seen of that money until we got into a hard place for food, then Jeff would manage to get us something to eat. Jeff was the best kind of a forager; he knew how to buy and he knew instinctively where to find things.
During the Knoxville campaign, had it not been for Jeff we should have suffered much more than we did, although much of the time we received only half rations from the Commissary Department and at times we received only two ears of corn for a day’s ration, but every once in a while Jeff would get hold of something and give us a good meal. On the march over the mountains he picked up a little Mississippi mule and the amount of food that man hunted up and brought into camp during the siege of Knoxville was prodigious. If a foraging party went out from headquarters after forage for the horses and mules, Jeff was pretty sure to go along and he seldom came back to camp empty handed. Had any one asked Jeff how he got those things, he would have been shot on the spot—but no such foolish questions were asked.