iver quite a while, firing away.
After a while we saw the fire of the Johnnies was slackening. Then we
heard some troops down to our left cheering. From their position they
could see the Johnnies were retreating better than we could. But as soon
as we saw they were starting, we started too, and being much nearer we
were easily the first to reach it. We crossed the bridge, turned to the
right and marched up a little way and halted to wait for ammunition, we
having only a few rounds left. For a while troops came across the bridge
and poured past us by the thousand. After a while we moved up on to the
high ground opposite the bridge. A dead Johnny, a sergeant was lying there
on the ground. Harry Aldrich turned him over and got his portemonnaie out
of his pocket. He opened it and found done up in a little piece of paper a
number of five dollar gold pieces. A little later I came upon a man lying
dead holding in his hand a photograph of a group of children. He had
evidently found himself mortally wounded, had thought of his family at
home and had taken that picture from his pocket to take a last look at the
likeness of those he loved so dearly and had died with the picture in his
hand. Toward night we advanced toward Sharpsburg and took a position on
the brow of a ridge facing the high hill where Lee had his reserve
artillery massed, and there we stayed until well into the evening. We soon
fired away all but one of our cartridges, retaining that one against an
emergency. The Confederate infantry was behind a stone wall part way down
the hill from the artillery. One of the Johnnies killed behind that wall
had my knapsack on his back. He had found it in the little grove beside
the road near the Henry House Hill on the Bull Run battlefield, and
carried it into Maryland.

The knapsack was found and identified by the man who painted the initials
of my name, company, regiment and state on the side of it. He was a
Company K man who was detailed in the hospital department. He found it in
going over the field gathering up the wounded and burying the dead after
the battle. It was there on that ridge that Lieutenant Holbrook was
killed. He was knocked all to pieces by a cannon ball fired from one of
the guns on the top of the hill. He lay about eight or ten feet to my
right at the time.

A regiment came up during the afternoon and took up a position on our left
and stayed there until they had fired away all their ammunition and then,
w