| INTRENCHMENTS AT KENESAW MOUNTAIN, GA. |
"We asked Colonel Wead to have the men lie down. The order, 'Lie down,' was passed along the line, and we returned to our position by the colors. Subsequently, Colonel Wead joined us there. The firing continued; the range became lower; the men lying down were wounded fast. We all lay down. Colonel Wead was struck a glancing blow on the shoulder-strap by a rifle-ball, and, after lying senseless for a moment, said to the writer, 'I am wounded; take the command.' We arose immediately, walked along the line, and quietly withdrew the men to the lower edge of the wood where we had entered. In that night's blunder the regiment lost forty-two men, killed and wounded. During the night and early morning, Colonel Wead and the wounded crawled back to the regiment. The more severely wounded were carried back half a mile farther to an old barn, where their wounds were dressed and whence they were taken in ambulances to White House. Nothing could equal the horrors of that night's battle; the blundering march into the enemy's intrenchments, his merciless fire, the cries of our wounded and dying, the irresolute stupidity and want of sagacity of the conducting officer, deepen the plot and color the picture.
"At 4 A.M. of the 3d, the Eighteenth Corps was formed for the charge in three lines; first, a heavy skirmish line; second, a line consisting of regiments deployed; third, a line formed of regiments in solid column doubled on the centre. The Ninety-eighth was in the third line. The whole army advanced together at sunrise. Within twenty minutes after the order to advance had been given, one of the most sanguinary battles of the war, quick, sharp, and decisive, had taken place. By this battle the Army of the Potomac gained nothing, but the Eighteenth Corps captured and held a projecting portion of the enemy's breastwork in front. The Ninety-eighth knew well the ground that it helped to capture, for there lay its dead left on the night of the 1st.
"The men at once began the construction of a breastwork, using their hands, tin cups, and bayonets. Later they procured picks and shovels. They laid the dead in line and covered them over, and to build the breastwork used rails, logs, limbs, leaves, and dirt. The enemy's shells, solid shot and rifle-balls all the while showered upon them, and hit every limb and twig about or above them. Nothing saved us but a slight elevation of the ground in front. A limb cut by a solid shot felled General Marston to the ground. Three boyish soldiers, thinking to do the State service, picked him up, and were hurrying him to the rear, when he recovered his consciousness and compelled them to drop himself. In a short time he walked slowly back to the front. In this advance and during the day our regimental flag received fifty-two bullet-holes, and the regiment lost, killed and wounded, sixty-one. Colonel Wead rose to his feet an instant on the captured line, when a rifle-ball pierced his neck and cut the subclavian vein. He was carried back to the barn beside the road, where he died the same day....
"On the night of the 4th the Ninety-eighth moved from the second line through the approach to the front line, and relieved the One Hundred and Eighteenth New York and the Tenth New Hampshire. It had barely time to take its position when the Confederates made a night attack along our whole front. For twenty minutes before, the rain of shells and balls was terrific; the missiles tore and screamed and sang and howled along the air. Every branch and leaf was struck; every inch of the trees and breastworks was pierced. Then the firing ceased along his line for a few minutes, while the enemy crossed his breastworks and formed for the charge, when,
| 'At once there rose so wild a yell, As all the fiends from heaven that fell Had pealed the banner cry of hell.' |
But no living thing could face that 'rattling shower' of ball and shell which poured from our lines upon them. They fell to the ground, they crept away, they hushed the yell of battle. The horrors of that night assault baffle description."
The entire loss of the National Army at Cold Harbor in the first twelve days of June—including the battles just described and the almost constant skirmishing and minor engagements—was ten thousand and eighty-eight; and among the dead and wounded were many valuable officers. General Tyler and Colonel Brooke were wounded, and Colonels Porter, Morris, Meade, and Byrnes were killed.1