o the left. As I expected, they opened on me, and
the bullets flew thick and fast about me. The first turn I got a bullet
through my right leg just above the ankle. It felt like the stinging cut
of a whip and rather accelerated my speed. About fifty yards back was an
old slab fence to my right, and I plunged headlong behind that, hoping
to find shelter from those bullets. I fell directly behind several other
wounded men, two of whom rolled over dead from bullets that came through
the slabs and which were probably aimed at me. This flushed me again,
and by the same zigzag tactics I succeeded in getting back to the
railroad embankment, where, to my great joy, I found Colonel Albright
with what remained of the regiment. Colonel Albright grasped me in his
arms as I came over, with the exclamation, "We thought you were killed."
Sergeant-Major Clapp told me that he had rolled me over and satisfied
himself that I was dead before they went back.

As I reached cover under this embankment I remember noticing a
field-officer rallying his men very near us on our right, and that
instant his head was literally carried away by a shell. So intense was
the situation that even this tragic death received only a passing
thought. Then came the Irish brigade, charging over our line as they did
at Antietam. They came up and went forward in fine form, but they got
but a few yards beyond the embankment, when they broke and came back,
what was left of them, in great confusion. No troops could stand that
fire. Our division and the whole Second Corps, in fact, were now
completely disorganized, and the men were making their way back to the
city and the cover of the river-bank as best they could, whilst the
splendid old Ninth Corps was advancing to take its place. Profiting by
our experience, they did not advance by those streets through which we
came, but made their way through houses and yards and so escaped that
concentrated fire on the streets. Their advancing lines, covering the
whole city front, looked magnificent, and it was dreadful to think that
such a splendid body of men must march into such a slaughter-pen. Their
movement was a repetition of ours. With bayonets unfixed they moved
forward and attempted to maintain a firing-line under Marye's Heights on
the ground from which we had been driven, only to be hurled mercilessly
back as we had been. Our line had been the first to make this effort,
and for some reason we had approached to within