e pike, and that bore away to the left and south.

My battalion, the veteran Thirteenth Conn. Infantry, should have been
led by my Colonel, C. D. Blinn: but he was sick the night before, and in
the morning, at the crossing of the Opequon, he fell out, and left the
command to me. He had no part in the battle. Our Thirteenth deserves a
passing notice. It was the favorite regiment of General Birge, its first
colonel.[2] When he was made brigadier, the regiment entered the brigade
commanded by Colonel E. L. Molineux. Birge was never so happy as when
riding into action, and Molineux, who had been severely wounded in the
same battle with me, was not over-cautious. My regiment and both
brigades, the first and second of Grover's Division, had caught the
spirit of those two commanders. Quite generally they mistook the
forward movement for an immediate charge.

We had been under an intermittent fire for some time, but now the
advance intensified the conflict. The chief anxiety of good soldiers at
such a time, as I often noticed, is to get at the enemy as soon as
possible, and cease to be mere targets. Their enthusiasm now accelerated
their pace to a double-quick, and was carrying them too far to the
front. Birge and Molineux endeavored in vain to check their rapidity. My
battalion, I think, was nearest the rebel line.

Between eleven and twelve the divisions of Getty, Ricketts, and Grover,
forty-eight regiments in all, to which were attached eight light
batteries with reserve artillery, began to move forward. It was a grand
spectacle. At first the movement was steady, and we thought of Scott's
lines,

The host moves like a deep-sea wave,
Where rise no rocks its pride to brave,
High-swelling, dark, and slow.

But all is quickly changed.

Looking back upon that scene after the lapse of more than fifty years,
its magnificence has not yet faded. I see as in a dream our long bending
wave of blue rolling slowly at first but with increasing speed,
foam-tipped with flags here and there and steel-crested with Birge's
bayonets yonder; glimpses of cavalry in the distance moving as if on
wings with the lightness of innumerable twinkling feet; numberless jets
of smoke across the fields marking the first line of Confederate
infantry, their musketry rattling precisely like exploding bunches of
firecrackers; batteries galloping to position, the thunder of a dozen
smiting the ear more rapidly than one could count; the buzz, his