Howard B. Cushing
Now, as to Cushing's wounds. One piece of shell struck him in the thighs; another piece struck him in the shoulder; but he stuck to the guns until a ball struck him right under the nose. He fell on one side of the piece and General Armistead on the other. His right thumb was burned to the bone, serving vent without a thumb-pad. We were all tired, powder-burned and bruised; so we laid the dead men together and lay atop of them all night. The next morning we took Cushing's fatigue blouse off, and his cook got that after I took off the shoulder-straps. I carried them till the next winter, and gave them to his brother (Howard) at Brandy Station.
Later Naval Service of William Cushing
Up to the day of Alonzo Cushing's death, the reputation of his younger brother William kept pretty even pace with his own. William's judgment in moments of imminent peril seemed to be unerring, so that a venture with him appeared to his companions to have but one chance of failure—the death of the adventurer himself. But this had been challenged with so many styles of defiance, as to cause the more superstitious among the sailors to believe him invulnerable. They were always ready and anxious to accompany him on those of his expeditions that appeared the most desperate. The unlimited devotion of his men and under-officers is one of the most valuable assets of a military or naval officer. This, with his other qualities, procured for him a commission as lieutenant on July 16, 1862, nearly four months before he attained the age of twenty years.
William was thereupon given the position of second officer on the gunboat "Perry," on the North Carolina coast, at an age when a midshipman or master's mate, or even a lieutenant, is usually content to play a very subordinate part in warfare.
Soon after this (September following), his superior officer, Lieutenant-Commander Flusser, was ordered up the Blackwater River with his own and two other boats to co-operate with a land force in preventing the escape of about seven thousand Confederates stationed at Franklin, with Norfolk as their ultimate object. The naval contingent was at the rendezvous at the agreed time; that from the army failed to make connection. It was an unpleasant predicament for the boats, but they fought their way back, down the narrow channel of the river, the banks of which for many miles were lined with infantry and artillery.
At one point, when the decks were being swept by the enemy's bullets, and a boarding party was making a dash for the "Perry," Cushing called a half dozen of his men to help him get a howitzer into position, to meet the boarders with canister. When his volunteers were all killed or disabled, he took the gun alone and trained it upon the assailants with such effect that they ran away. In Flusser's report of the affair he took occasion to say: