XCVII
Gettysburg, Pa.,July 4, 1863.
Gettysburg, Pa.,July 4, 1863.
Gettysburg, Pa.,July 4, 1863.
Gettysburg, Pa.,July 4, 1863.
I WRITEon the blank pages of an orderly’s book, which George Slade picked up. It is the only paper I have, as I lost my knapsack and all its contents in the battle day before yesterday. Our corps was engaged that day, and the Second Regiment was in the very fiercest of the fight and met its heaviest loss yet in any one battle. About two hundred are gone out of our little regiment, but, as usual, I came through all right. I don’t know now how I did it. While we lay supporting a battery, before we had fired a shot, one shell burst right in my group. The man who touched me on the right [Jonathan Merrill] had his thigh cut away, and the two at my left [Lyndon B. Woods and Sergeant James M. House] were very severely wounded—and I never had a scratch. Talk about luck! A little while after, we charged to save the battery, and it was a wild time. As many of our wounded were left in the hands of the rebels, no accurate list can be made now. Charlie Vickery and a Seventeenth man in my company are killed. [Vickery did not die until the 11th.] Joe Hubbard, Lieutenant Dascomb, Frank Chase and Johnny Barker are among the killed. [Barker recovered from his terrible wound and lived many years with a trephined skull.] Ed. Kenniston was shot through both legs. I blundered onto him in the field hospital near where we bivouacked. He was lying by a stone wall, in a field packed with wounded men. He had lost everything but the bloody clothes he wore. I fixed him up with what I had left—filled my canteen with water and laid beside him, with my haversack, in which there happened to be a few really tastypieces of grub.[1]Ed. wants father to go down and tell his folks it is only a flesh wound, and with a little assistance he will be able to stand on his feet.
George Slade wants me to send you this wayside rose that he picked on the battlefield. The Johnny who had the overhauling of my knapsack got a fine picture of a certain black-eyed Yankee girl, but he didn’t have the reading of any of her letters.
A shell burst right on our colors, early in the action, breaking the staff into three pieces. The batteries were so close together, some of them, that they threw grape at each other. I never was under such an artillery fire. Gen. Sickles lost a leg.
There was a great fight yesterday, but not over the same ground as the day before. The rebels made a tremendous effort to smash our lines [Pickett’s charge,] but were thrown back in great disorder and leaving a great many prisoners in our hands. We were not in it, simply because they didn’t happen to hit the part of the line we were holding, but struck a little to our right. Today we are waiting for something to turn up. Out to our front the skirmishers are industriously popping away, but it is a little early for the real business. Before night, somewhere along the line, we will probably have a real old-fashioned Fourth of July celebration, with plenty of fireworks. The armies are holding practically the same lines we started in on here, but the advantage is surely with us.
Our new recruits stood up to their work like men—none did better. I cannot write more now, but when this fight is over and I can get my hands on some writing paper, I’ll try to do better.