Captain John W. Torsch, Comd’g Maryland Battalion.
The battalion promptly repaired to the point designated, where it found three battalions in readiness to assault the trenches lost a few evenings before. The troops then moved to the attack in gallant Style, but the Second Maryland alone performed the work assigned them, the troops on the right and left having given way, which leaves the battalion in a precarious situation. Although the enemy are in their works in force, and but twenty yards in our front, they do not venture to attack. Capt. Torsch (who has been in command of the battalion for some months) declared it as his intention to fight them to the last, in which resolve he is most heartily seconded by the little command.
April 5th.—Before daylight on the morning of the 4th we succeeded, after twenty-four hours of intense anxiety, in extricating ourselves from the perilous position we had gotten into the preceding night. Captain Torsch then threw out skirmishers in front, under Captain Duvall, and the remainder of the battalion he formed behind a line of works at intervals of thirty paces.
At daylight the enemy made two spirited attacks about a mile on our left, both of which were repulsed, but a third proved successful. Moving then to the right and left they carried everything before them. Captain Torsch, finding his left flank attacked, formed his men perpendicularly to the rear, and taking position behind some logs, repulsed and drove back two attacking columns in succession. McComb meanwhile endeavored to reinforce Torsch on the right. At this instant the enemy attacked on what had been Torsch’s front, but now his right flank, when McComb, finding himself almost surrounded, gave orders for the whole brigade to fall back to Hatcher’s Run, though contesting every foot of ground, but losing heavily in prisoners.
Captain Ferd. Duvall, in command of the skirmish line, finding himself hard pressed, and his further retreat cut off, with a handful of men threw himself into a small interior work, resolved upon making a last determined stand. Again and again did the enemy attempt to dislodge this devoted little band, but they were as often hurled back with heavy loss. At length by hundreds they swarmed over the breastworks and gained the interior of the works, and then, and not until then, did they surrender.
The officers taken here were as follows:
Captain Ferd. Duvall, Lieutenants Zollinger, Tolson, Polk, Byus and Wise.
Captain Torsch, with the remnant of the battalion, had in the meantime fallen back to Hatcher’s Run, where finding the Boydton plank road bridge in the hands of the enemy, they plunged into the stream and swam to the opposite bank, and joined the forces on that side.
The rest is soon told. In the retreat of the army which followed, the handful of men left of the battalion assisted in bringing up the rear. The privations endured until the army reached Appomattox Court House are too well known to repeat, and by none were they borne more uncomplainingly than by Captain Torsch and his men; and when, on the 9th of April, 1865, they laid down their arms in obedience to the last command they were ever to receive from their beloved Lee, it was with feelings not easily imagined. As an organization the Second Maryland Infantry here ceased to exist, but it has left a heritage to its posterity and to its State of which they may be justly proud.
Captain Torsch, on whom the unpleasant duty devolved, surrendered upon this occasion the following officers and men, who can point to the record and proudly say, “We were of the first, and were the last.”