CHARGE OF MAY 22D.
WHILE waiting the charge of the storming party and watching their
progress across the field to the enemy's works, I noticed a group of
general officers close to our left, composed of Grant, Sherman and Giles
A. Smith, with their field glasses, watching the little storming party
painting a trail of blood across that field. Those distinguished
commanders, unlike ourselves, were standing behind large trees, and
squinted cautiously out to the right and left, exposing as little of
their brass buttons as possible, and I think I saw them dodge a couple
of times. I thought of the convincing speech the officer made to his
command on the eve of the battle, when he assured them that he might be
killed himself, as some balls would go through the biggest trees.
General Ewing's brigade led the assault after the storming party had
sped their bolts, and advanced along the crown of an interior ridge
which partially sheltered his advance. This command actually entered the
parapet of the enemy's works at a shoulder of the bastion, but when the
enemy rose up in double ranks and delivered its withering fire his
forces were swept back to cover, but the brave and resourceful old Ewing
shifted his command to the left, crossed the ditch, pressed forward, and
ere long we saw his men scrambling up the outer face of the bastion and
his colors planted near the top of the rebel works.
Our brigade was formed in a ravine threatening the parapet, 300 yards to
the left of the bastion, and we had connected with Ransom's brigade.
From that formation we fixed bayonets and charged point blank for the
rebel works at a double quick. Unfortunately for me I was in the front
of the rank and compelled to maintain that position, and a glance at the
forest of gleaming bayonets sweeping up from the rear, at a charge, made
me realize that it only required a stumble of some lubber just behind me
to launch his bayonet into the offside of my anatomy, somewhere in the
neighborhood of my anterior suspender buttons. This knowledge so
stimulated me that I feared the front far less than the rear, and forged
ahead like an antelope, easily changing my double quick to a quadruple
gait, and most emphatically making telegraph time. During that run and
rush I had frequently to either step upon or jump over the bodies of our
dead and wounded, which were scattered along our track. The nearer the
enemy we got the more enthusiastic we became, and the more confidence we
had in scaling their works, but as we neared their parapet we
encountered the reserved fire of the rebels which swept us back to
temporary cover of a ridge, two-thirds of the way across the field, from
which position we operated the rest of the day. When we got back there
we had been fighting and maneuvering for more than three hours. Once
during the assault I remember the 116th Illinois was on our left. Gen.
Giles A. Smith was between me and that regiment; Colonel Tupper, its
commander, was making a speech to his men and advising them to take the
works or die in the attempt. I thought then, and I have had no reason to
change my mind since, that Tupper was gloriously drunk. General Smith
snatched off his hat and yelled, "Three cheers for Colonel Tupper." I
caught off my cap and together we gave one full grown "Hurrah" and about
half another, when the explosion of a monster shell inconveniently near
us adjourned the performance sine die. I saw also at another time during
the fight, a captain coming back from the front on the run; he had been
wounded in the wrist. A man was trying to lead him off the field, but
couldn't keep up with the fleet footed captain. He was vainly trying to
clutch the wounded man's coat tails as he pursued him, and though under
a deadly fire at the time, more than a hundred of us who beheld the
race, laughed heartily. When we got behind the ridge we were ordered to
lie down, and it felt good to know that we had even a little ridge of
solid earth between us and the enemy's bullets. We lay there on our
backs and looked back into the throats of the artillery as it shelled
the enemy's works over our heads. We could see the balls distinctly as
they were discharged from the cannons, and they looked like bumble-bees
flying over us, only somewhat larger. While we were thus watching the
flight of the balls, one of them struck and cut off the top of a tall
sapling standing between us and the cannon; the ball by that means was
depressed, and instead of going over us came directly for us and into
our midst. Every one who saw it thought, as I did, that the ball was
coming straight at him. I rolled over to avoid it; I heard the dull thud
of its striking and a scream of agony, and I stood up and looked. That
ball had struck and carried away the life of Morris Bird, a private of
Company H, and the only son of a widowed mother. I saw a private of the
4th Virginia, which regiment was sheltered there with us also, rise to
his feet to fire his gun, when one of our cannon balls took off his
head, and it was a clean decapitation, too. The enemy shelled us
incessantly the rest of the day after we gained this position, and it
cost us many brave men.
One close call of an exploding shell knocked me senseless and took off
the right arm of Louis Cazean, a private of my company. They told me
afterwards that poor Cazean, when he lifted up the fragments of his
shattered right arm dangling from the white cords and tendons, said,
"Boys, I'd give five hundred dollars if that was my left arm instead of
my right." When I regained my senses I found Sergeant Whitcomb of my
company bathing my head with water and trying to force some commissary
whiskey down my throat. He didn't have near as much trouble getting the
whiskey down me after I came to and found out what it was. For a long
time the rumbling in my head was deafening and painful, but gradually
subsided and the concussion left me a whole skin and with no deleterious
effects. And the day wore on until night closed in upon us, and then we
lay down and slept on our arms accoutered as we were.
Through some bungling, when the other regiments were ordered to retire
during the night to the rear of the Walnut hills, my regiment was
omitted from the list, and when we received our order to fall back in
the morning we had to go out under the fire of the 25,000 enemies. That
blunder cost us some brave men; for the rebels availed themselves of the
splendid opportunity to fire upon our retiring lines. We had failed to
take Vicksburg by assault, notwithstanding the bravery of our men;
notwithstanding that many stands of colors were planted on the enemy's
works; Sergeant Griffith with eleven men of the 22nd Iowa regiment
entered a fort of the enemy, and his men all fell in the fort except the
sergeant, who captured and brought off thirteen confederate prisoners,
and Captain White of the Chicago Mercantile battery immortalized himself
by carrying forward one of his guns by hand to the ditch, and double
shotting it, fired into an embrasure of the work, disabling an enemy's
gun in it and cutting down the gunners.
The rebels had more than 25,000 men behind their works, and why they
didn't kill every soul of us I cannot imagine. How glad we were to get
back of the Walnut hills on the 23rd, and to go into camp with the
assurance that no more assaulting efforts would probably be required of
us. When we sat around the campfire down in the ravine that night we
compared notes of experiences during that bloody battle and talked about
our dead and wounded comrades. Old Joe Smith, who was one of the
storming party volunteers, said, "Boys, I had sweet revenge on the
brutes yesterday. I got right into the crotch of a fallen tree close to
their works, so that I was protected in front and on both flanks, and I
laid my gun across the log so that I had constant aim on their works,
and when one of them fellers got up to shoot I would see his gun barrel
come up first, and I would have a dead liner on him when his head popped
up and I could salt him every time, pretty near." "But," said Joe,
"there was one feller kept gitting up right opposite me and his face was
so dumbed thin I couldn't hit 'im." After supper we were detailed to dig
rifle pits, and had talks with rebels across the bloody chasm.
[Illustration]