Part 6

It was about this time that General Hill, then our Lieutenant-Colonel, had an adventure that would have been a misadventure but for his characteristic readiness. General Foster requested him to go out through the big corn field already told of, and learn what he could of the force of the rebels in our front, and to do it in his own way, having learned that as a daring, long-headed scout, General Hill was without a peer in our brigade. Taking a couple of orderlies with him, General Hill rode into the interior until he judged he was a mile from the river, not seeing any rebels yet, then he bore to the left to strike the river away above us, intending to ride down along the river bank to Deep Bottom. After riding for about a half mile towards the river, he suddenly rode into the rear of an undeployed rebel picket force of about twenty-five men. Clustering around him, their officer laughingly asked the General "where he was going." Personally the General felt very sure that he was going to Richmond, however much against his will, but putting on a bold face, he answered, "that he had rode out to get the news by exchanging papers with them." "This is pretty cool," said the rebel officer, "let me see your papers." Luckily the General had a copy of the _New York Tribune_, and one of the _Philadelphia Inquirer_ in his pocket, and luckily too, a rebel sergeant here said "this is the same officer that sent us a paper the other day." This was so, the General, a week before, when officer of the day, having effected an exchange of papers with this sergeant through the medium of one of our men, when the sergeant must have taken a sharp look at the officer who moved so cooly along a dangerous picket line. "Well," said the good-natured rebel lieutenant, "I guess I will let you go, you look as though you were telling the truth. But I must say you took a good deal of pains to come so far, and to come in our rear, too." Our General with the guileless face answered "that he got lost in riding out, and was trying to find his way into camp when he rode up to them." Drifting into a general conversation with the officers and his men, each party covertly tried to learn a little something concerning the other's force on that side of the river, until the General, having learned all he wished to, embraced a good opportunity to make his adieus. As he rode away with his eager orderlies riding on his heels, the Confederate officer, on whom the real purpose of the General's mission had dawned, but who was too honorable to take back his given word, called out, "Remember this, you can't play at exchanging papers with me again." With this friendly warning from the "good fellow," as the General rightly calls him, ringing in their ears, the little Union party spurred its horses into a magnificent burst of speed that quickly took it out of all possible danger of having to obey a recall.

For July the 10th Captain Maxfield's diary states, that (among others) First Sergeant Bassett, of D, reported for duty from recruiting service in Maine, where he had been for some months. For the 12th, that an expedition from the 10th Connecticut went up the river and captured a lieutenant and fourteen men, besides burning a mill. For the 13th, that two prisoners were taken by a scouting party under Major Baldwin and Captain Nickels, and that some of D were in this party. Possibly it was this expedition that Private William Sherman, of D, shot the rebel "stone dead," as he declared, but while he was reloading his gun the supposed to be dead man jumped up and ran away regardless of Sherman's hilarious expostulations.

For the 14th, the diary states, that the rebels opened fire with a battery they had stationed in a ravine and that their shells killed "a horse and six men" on the gunboat Mendota. It would appear from this that there were veritable "horse marines" in our navy.

For the 21st, the diary states that our regiment moved across to Strawberry Plains, on the south bank of Bailey's Creek, and that we captured eleven prisoners, but that the enemy appeared in force and caused us to fall back into our intrenchments. For the 22d, that the regiment went to the Plains again, "we taking all we wished to," as the Captain modestly phrases it. For the 23d, that the regiment went to Strawberry Plains again, and met a strong force of the enemy, we losing two killed and four wounded, and that we remained that night on the ground we had taken during the day. For the 24th, that we were relieved by two regiments of the Nineteenth Corps, that Corps having just arrived from the Red River, and, by the way, its commander was our old brigade commander, General Emory. For the 25th, the diary tells us that the pickets of the Nineteenth Corps on the Plains were driven in, and that we were ordered out to retake the position they had lost. For the 26th, that we were still skirmishing on Strawberry Plains in an effort to retake the lost position, and that by night, when we had recovered it, we had lost one man killed and twenty-one wounded, and that we were relieved by the Tenth Connecticut that night. For the 27th, that the Second Corps crossed to the Plains early in the morning.

These operations of our regiment on Strawberry Plains in the last days of July were in connection with a movement planned against the enemy's left flank, resting on our side of the James, and directly in our front.

After the assaults of the 18th of June, the immediate attempts of Grant to overcome Lee were confined to flanking movements from the right and left, north and south of the James. The plan of the movement we were initiating was that Hancock should move to Deep Bottom with the Second Corps and two divisions of cavalry under Sheridan, and that the Second Corps should try and break through the rebel line near Chapin's Bluff, at about the spot we operated in the following October; then if the infantry succeeded in breaking the rebel line, the cavalry was to make a dash on Richmond, while Hancock should operate to prevent rebel reenforcements crossing from the south bank of the James by the ponton bridge they had laid down between Chapin's and Drury's Bluffs. And that if the dash on Richmond could not be made, then the railroad communications of the rebels on the north side should be destroyed as far as practicable. It was thought, too, that this movement, if unsuccessful in itself, might force the rebels to reinforce the north side so heavily as to cause such a reduction of their force holding the Petersburgh lines as to give a fair promise of success in the assault to be made when the mine in front of Burnside's Ninth Corps was sprung.

As a necessary preliminary to these movements, and to give the idea perhaps that the contemplated attack, which they could not help learning of the preparations for, through spies, prisoners and deserters, was a flanking one, by the way of Bailey's Creek, as, in fact, it finally became, the Eleventh crossed to Strawberry Plains, just on the other side of Bailey's Creek, having to cross the James twice to get there, once to the south side by the ponton bridge we held the head of, and then to the north side again by another ponton bridge laid down with its north side head debouching on the great cleared flat known as Strawberry Plains. Across the head of these Plains runs the River road, a connecting link of the system of roads leading into Richmond. Working our way up through the woods bordering Bailey's Creek, by night we had driven the enemy into his works guarding the road and outer lines, his main one lying on the Deep Bottom side of Bailey's Creek and running along that side of the Creek to Fussell's Mill at the head of the Creek, from which point his line was refused, as the military phrase is, that is it turned sharply back.

It was the position we had gained before this outer line that we turned over to the Nineteenth Corps and that they lost the 25th of July. The next day we pressed the enemy steadily back until we were lying close to their outer line, the gunboats firing sharply this day, throwing their heavy shells over our heads at the enemy's lines, the enemy replying as best they could with a battery of artillery they had brought down and stationed in the road. During the day a shell from a gunboat fell so unfortunately short as to fall just behind our right rifle pit, lightly scooped out pits, unconnected, each sheltering a half dozen men. It fell at just the most dangerous distance from our men, burst, and threw its fragments right among them, killing and wounding several.

During this night Hancock and Sheridan arrived with their troops. Halting their men on the other side of the river, they rode over to Deep Bottom and had a consultation with General Foster, who described to them what he had learned of the enemy's works in our front. Hancock then telegraphed to General Meade, his immediate superior, stating what had been told him, and doubting the advisability of assaulting so strong an intrenched line with the force at his command, and suggesting a flank movement by way of Strawberry Plains instead. General Meade coinciding with him in his opinion, Hancock moved his troops over the river to Strawberry Plains, and attacked soon after daylight on the 27th of July, the cavalry on his right.

General Miles moved to the front across the open field with a brigade in open order, charged and captured the enemy's battery, four 20-pound parrot guns, in a handsome manner. Then swinging to the right on its pivot, the position held by the Eleventh on the creek, the whole line moved out across the enemy's roads until it had invested his whole line, extending from our position on the creek to Fussell's Mill. The part of the infantry in the plan was now completed. The cavalry then proceeded to carry out the flanking operation it was charged with, but the rebels had been reinforced, four divisions of infantry and two of cavalry having come across the James and taken position in the works we were threatening, so that when Sheridan's cavalry moved out beyond Fussell's Mill they found the road barred by a heavy force of cavalry supported by infantry.

General Grant came across the river to the Plains that afternoon and made a personal observation of the rebel position, and deciding that not much could be done there, returned to his headquarters, from which he telegraphed General Meade that he did not wish Hancock to assault, but for him to hold his position for another day. For, though foiled in his attempt to make a dash on Richmond, Grant had learned that the reinforcements the rebels had hurried across the James had left their Petersburgh lines guarded by three infantry divisions only, while but one cavalry division remained on that side of the river, and now hoped by threatening demonstrations to keep the rebel force on the north side, out of the way of the column he was already forming to assault the Petersburgh lines. In obedience to Grant's wishes, Hancock and Sheridan spent another day in holding the heavy rebel force far from the scene of Grant's new hopes, hurrying back to Petersburgh with their troops the night of the 29th, to take part in the assault that was to follow the mine explosion set for the morning of July 30th. The explosion took place as planned, but for various reasons the results were as disastrous to the Union as to the Confederate army. Returning to our camp at Deep Bottom, we spent a few days in comparative quietude, while a new movement in which we were to take part was in process of evolution.

General Grant had received information that General Lee was strongly reenforcing Early, now operating in the Valley, and believed the reenforcements were so largely taken from the troops on the north side of the James as to give a chance for a more successful operation on that side of the river than our late one had been. The troops to be engaged in this second attempt were largely those engaged in the first, the Second Corps, part of the Tenth, and a cavalry force under General Gregg, all to be under Hancock's command. But instead of marching directly across the river as before, Hancock's corps was to embark on transports at City Point and move down the river in the afternoon, to give the Confederate spies the idea that it was going to the Valley, but under the cover of the night the transports were to run back to Deep Bottom, the troops were to disembark at Strawberry Plains, move rapidly in the morning, turn the enemy's line on Bailey's Creek, and push for Richmond. But through lack of proper landing places the second corps was not disembarked until eight o'clock instead of at daybreak.

The part of the Tenth Corps men in the programme was that we were to assault in our front, which we did promptly at daybreak, the Second Corps' historian stating that we opened fire at five o'clock.

The Eleventh held the part of the picket lines running through the woods in front of Deep Bottom the night before the 14th of August. Though so far from the river we pickets had a suspicion that something was on foot. The ponton bridge crossing to Strawberry Plains was muffled, yet we could distinctly hear the rumble of the artillery and the tramping of the horses of Gregg's cavalry division as they crossed it, and the screeching of steamboat whistles was too continuous for secrecy too, though necessary from the darkness of the night and the crowding of so many boats in the narrow channel. If we heard it, and our suspicions were aroused by it, then our contiguous friends, the enemy, whose pickets could hear it all as well as we could, must have been forewarned of what was coming in the morning.

But we of the Eleventh had no idea that we were to take the sharp initiative that we did. In the early morning of the 14th Colonel Plaisted rode up to the reserve of D and directed Lieutenant Norris to deploy the reserve, move out to the picket line and advance with it until he met the enemy, then to press forward and capture his exterior lines. (Lieutenant Grafton Norris, of Company F, was in detailed command of D, Lieutenant Maxfield having gone North on an overdue leave of absence). The movement directed by the Colonel was immediately proceeded with, and in less time than it takes to tell it we had moved out, and our skirmish line was moving rapidly through the woods and was on the enemy's pickets. We forced them back on their reserve, stationed behind a strong line of rifle pits, with partly open ground before them immediately in front of D's skirmishers. This line ran along the top of the reverse side of a dip of the ground, covering a wood road that ran directly down this dip before crossing their line. As the men of D reached this road in hot pursuit of the enemy, its inviting smoothness led them to converge on it, and, frantic now with anticipation, to charge the enemy's works without orders. Lieutenant Norris and Sergeant Young saw the danger and tried hard to prevent this movement, rushing among the men to drive them out of the road, but before they had an appreciable time to enforce their commands in a withering rifle fire of the enemy swept the road, killing and wounding several of our men. In spite of this severe check the officers held their men close up to the enemy's works, on which we opened an eager fire. For a time our line was kept back by the enemy, but suddenly the exertions of our men were rewarded, the rebel line beyond our company's left giving way just as the enemy in our front had ceased firing; and D took so quick an advantage of the opening that before the startled and momentarily confused enemy fairly knew what was happening we had mounted their works and were in possession of them.

We found that their slackened fire meant that they had not had their breakfasts any more than had we, and that they had relinquished firing in fancied security until they should have strengthened the inner man. Their untouched rations of freshly cooked bread, cooked in Dutch ovens after the peculiar Southern style, with the side of fat bacon left behind them, satisfied the sharp monitions of several Yankee appetites.

The enemy had retreated to the main line, from which they opened a sharp artillery fire on us. This line across a wide field was so very formidable in appearance that an assault was not ordered.

Of D, Privates Hall, Shepard and Stanley had been killed, Corporals Keene, Weymouth and Privates Samuel A. Bragdon, Collins, Wm. Sherman, Adelbert Stratton and Alfred C. Butler had been wounded; Weymouth mortally so. It is notable that Butler, an impetuous youth, fell close to the enemy's works, wounded in three places, and that his friend Bragdon received his mortal wound in a brave attempt to rescue him from his perilous position.

During the rest of the 14th we lay on the ground we had won, General Birney, our new Corps commander, having been ordered to suspend his operations on account of the delay attending the movements of the second corps. It was a terribly hot day in open ground, General Mott reporting that of two small regiments of his Second Corps division exposed to it 105 men were prostrated by the heat.

This intense heat may have had something to do with the slowness and weakness of the Second Corps assault, for it was not delivered until four o'clock, and then with but one brigade, others intended for the attacking column having become too demoralized to make it wise to push them forward. The only effect of this movement was to draw enough of the enemy from our front to enable part of our corps to capture a battery of four eight-inch howitzers.

The record states the night of the 14th the greater part of our Corps was marched to the vicinity of Fussell's Mills at the head of Bailey's Creek, and that the order for the 15th was that our Corps should find the enemy's left and attack Gregg's Cavalry covering our flank, but that General Birney took so wide a circuit that it was night before he found the enemy's left and took position.

As for the Eleventh, we seem to have been placed on the left for the 15th, near the pivot, for we moved but little. The recollection is that we lay along a road most of the day, sheltering ourselves from falling rain in the bordering woods as best we could. At night we went into bivouac in a handsome grove of trees, and our wagons coming up to deal out company rations, D had a company supper, First Sergeant Bassett having arrived with the cooks and the men who, for one reason or another other than sickness, had been left in camp when we went on picket.

The morning of the 16th broke clear and cloudless, too cloudless, for it was soon evident that the 16th was to be a day like the 14th, when the men of the Second Corps suffered so terribly in men and morale. The regiment was on the move very early in the day. In moving for position we were soon under an aggravating fire, marching and counter-marching with men dropping out wounded or killed, until we took position in a dense wood where we were somewhat sheltered by a bend of ground. Here a column for attack was formed, the 1st Maryland Cavalry dismounted, serving as infantry and temporarily attached to our brigade, on our right.

Anticipating the coming assault, the enemy had thrown a heavy skirmish line into a line of rifle pits running along enfilading points, to sweep the woods with a galling fire. It is very unpleasant to lie in action under such a fire and see comrades to your right and left struck by unseen foes. If a man has nerves they are soon in a quiver, and if he has not known he had any before, he learns that he is not made quite of iron after all. We found it so in the half hour we lay in this position and it was really a relief when scudding aids dismounted and darting through the woods from tree to tree brought the order to charge. Quickly we arose to our feet, and rushed forward with the wild cry which seems as necessary to a charging force as the breath with which they give it. Almost immediately we were subjected to the most severe fire we were ever under. No mere skirmish line this, but an outlying line of battle. The woods fairly rang with the screeching of the bullets; still we pushed on, when suddenly the 1st Maryland fell back, not directly back, but obliquing into our own now swaying line, and in another second in spite of the shouts of their maddened officers, the men of the two regiments were falling back in confused mass.

But the men of the Eleventh were not at all panic stricken. Getting themselves out of the line of fire they turned voluntarily, and shaking themselves clear of the dismounted cavalry, closed up their shattered line. In a minute they were ready to go in again, and as General Foster rode on the scene, galloping along the line of his brigade to make sure that his regiments were making ready for another rush, and rode up to the Eleventh calling out "Forward, Boys," we dashed ahead, and before the enemy could repeat the withering tactics of a few minutes before, had driven them headlong from their rifle pits and were pursuing them to their main intrenchments under a heavy fire poured on us from their main line, which ran along a ridge of ground covered by a wide slashing of heavy bodied trees, felled in all directions. In charging through it the men were somewhat protected by the heavy logs, and fortunately, too, the enemy must fire down hill, giving a tendency to over shooting, else not so many of us as did would have reached the crest of the hill. Before we did, many had tumbled headlong among the fallen logs, and how any of us reached it, few can tell, but we did, the rebels retiring with more rapidity than grace as we poured into their works.

Beyond the captured line we found a smooth field of perhaps a hundred and fifty yards in width, dipping into a wood bordered run. It was to this run that the enemy had withdrawn, and from it they kept up a rapid fire on us, our men returning it with the more spirit that we had found boxes of cartridges strewed along the enemy's side of the works, cartridges that fitted our guns perfectly, so furnishing us with a much needed supply of ammunition.

But the fire that annoyed us most was an enfilading one from across a run beyond the left flank of our regiment. Beyond this run, on higher ground than we occupied, the enemy had built works to sweep the front of the works we had just taken. From here, snugly ensconced behind a difficult run, and hid from us by a stout growth of trees, left standing to mask their position, they swept our flank with a terrible fire. Efforts were made to dislodge them by sending brigades down our front to charge the run, but the cross-fire the charging brigades were subjected to forced them to retreat to cover. Suddenly fierce yells from the rebel lines announced that they were receiving reenforcements. The position was becoming serious.

As Colonel Hill and Major Baldwin had been badly wounded the command of the Regiment devolved on Captain Merrill of Company I. Our men were falling rapidly and those left were exhausted by the efforts they had made under a blazing sun, yet when a thin line of the Second Corps moved out of the woods behind us and advanced as if to support us in a charge we were to make by way of our left on the aggravating work on that flank, our men raised a glad hurrah and gathered their energies for a mighty rush. But, alas, the Second Corps men could not endure the murderous sweep of the fire the alert enemy poured upon them from their flanking position, and quickly melted back into the timber.