[Written on an irregular scrap of brown paper.]
LIII
Near Williamsburg, Va., May 8, 1862.
HAVE just come in from a trip over the battlefield, and was fortunate enough to pick up the big sheet of paper on which I am writing this letter. I will commence at the beginning and tell you all about it.
On Sunday morning, as soon as it was discovered that the rebels had evacuated Yorktown, we were ordered to pack knapsacks and be ready to march immediately. We had no time to cook rations, and went for two days with only the fragments we happened to have in our haversacks. We marched up over the rebel intrenchments and through Yorktown. The rebel works were very strong and would have been a hard nut to crack. The rebels had planted torpedoes along the road, but none of our regiment were hurt by them. The road was in a horrible condition and badly crowded, and we did not get along very fast. It was nine or ten o’clock at night when we filed out into the woods by the side of the road and, with all our harness on, laid down for such rest as one could get under such conditions and in a drizzling rain. We were up at half-past four the next morning and soon on the road again, up through the woods. We had gone about a mile and a half when we came to a big slashing, where the trees over an area about twice as large as Merrimack Common had been felled, criss-cross, in every direction. Beyond this, a large open plain, with a line of small forts, one of which was directly facing the road up which we were advancing. Our regiment filed out and formed line to the right of the road, and the Massachusetts First upon the left. We threw out skirmishers and advanced up through the slashing. It was rough navigating in that network of prostrate trees and interlaced limbs and branches, as we had all our housekeeping outfits on our backs. My haversack got caught and was torn to pieces, but I made that good on the field the next day. We wormed our way ahead, up to the edge of the open field, and there halted for our artillery and the rest of the division to come up. We had a pretty lively time there, but nothing very fierce. The rebels had four or five field pieces in the fort and skirmishers scattered along the front in little pits. We distributed ourselves behind stumps and logs, and quite a number had a genuine earthwork, made by punching holes through a thick mass of dirt that clung to the roots of an overturned tree. The cannon in the fort sent a solid shot, every little while, smashing and crashing down through the timber; but a number of our crack shots paid particular attention to those guns, while others devoted their talents to educating the rebels in those little picket holes. Perhaps half a dozen, selecting some particular hole, would lay with their sights covering the little mound of fresh dirt outside. The instant a head showed, there was trouble in that pit. They soon got enough of it, and for a long time the pits in front of the Second, for all we could see, might have been so many graves. All this time the rain was pouring, and we were fairly waterlogged. As business dragged, some of the men unfolded the little sections of tent and spread them over branches for a shelter. Others nursed up little fires and cooked a cup of coffee. Up to this time we had not had many men hit. Lieut. Burnham, of Manchester, was shot in the leg, and will, I am told, have to lose it. A man named Cole [Uriah W., of Co. H] was killed by a cannon ball.
At length our artillery came up and went into position in front of us. We lay supporting them an hour or two—and they were not having a very hot time of it. Then in the woods to our left, beyond the slashing, a tremendous fire of musketry broke loose. Volley followed volley, and after a while it was evident the firing was coming nearer, which meant that our troops in that part of the field were being driven back, and the rebels were gaining ground towards us. They came upon us through the slashing and along the edge of the field. I got in three or four shots across the road—which was better than most of our fellows could do—when the order was passed to fall back to the edge of the woods and re-form. This was no boys’ play. Balancing on a log and looking for the best path, my cap went flying and the bark from a limb I was holding onto. I had no further doubts as to the proper course—a tunnel was safer than an overhead bridge, just then, and the rest of the way I kept as close to the ground as I could.
Once again out of the slashing and in line, we were ordered across the road, where the entire regiment was deployed as skirmishers through the woods some distance back from the slashing. Then we were ordered to sail in, and moving forward we were soon in as lively a mix-up as you could well imagine. The first squad of rebels I ran onto I mistook for Eleventh Massachusetts men, there being a similarity of uniforms, and I was going right up to them, when Al. Simmons shouted, “Look out, Mart—those are rebels!” and fired. Quicker than you could say it, I was behind a big tree, and the ball had opened. It was a regular Indian fight, dodging through bushes and from tree to tree, sometimes forward and sometimes back. There were no end of personal encounters, and fights between squads and detachments, and all sorts of mixups, some ludicrous and some tragic. “Heenan” had his usual luck, coming out damaged but alive. He had a sudden and close collision with a rebel who came up out of somewhere like a jumping-jack. Nich. grabbed the reb’s bayonet and pushed it one side just as the fellow fired. He says he intended to polish that fellow off with his fists, but two others jumped in, and things were going hard with Nich., when some of us saw his predicament and started for the rescue with a big whoop and empty guns. They faded into the background, however, and we didn’t get one of them. Nich. is now nourishing a somewhat lacerated powder-stained hand.
One of the funny incidents was when Dave Steele, a lieutenant in Company G, made a dash into a squad of rebels, shouting, “Surrender, you d— cusses, or I’ll blow you to Hell!” What he was going to do his “blowing” with—as he had no arms but his sword—is still a question; but the rebels took his word for it and dropped their guns.