rses were at once brought up from a
ravine in the rear, and the battery limbered up and moved off
through the woods diagonally to the left and rear. We were put in
motion by the flank and followed it. Everything kept so still, the
loudest noise I heard was the clucking of the wheels of the
gun-carriages and caissons as they wound through the woods. We
emerged from the woods and entered a little old field. I then saw
to our right and front lines of men in blue moving in the same
direction we were, and it was evident that we were falling back.
All at once, on the right, the left, and from our recent front,
came one tremendous roar, and the bullets fell like hail. The lines
took the double-quick towards the rear. For awhile the attempt was
made to fall back in order, and then everything went to pieces. My
heart failed me utterly. I thought the day was lost. A confused
mass of men and guns, caissons, army wagons, ambulances, and all
the debris of a beaten army surged and crowded along the narrow
dirt road to the landing, while that pitiless storm of leaden hail
came crashing on us from the rear. It was undoubtedly at this
crisis in our affairs that the division of General Prentiss was
captured.

I will digress here for a minute to speak of a little incident
connected with this disastrous feature of the day that has always
impressed me as a pathetic instance of the patriotism and unselfish
devotion to the cause that was by no means uncommon among the rank
and file of the Union armies.

There was in my company a middle-aged German named Charles
Oberdieck. According to the company descriptive book, he was a
native of the then kingdom of Hanover, now a province of Prussia.
He was a typical German, flaxen-haired, blue-eyed, quiet and
taciturn, of limited and meager education, but a model soldier, who
accepted without question and obeyed without a murmur the orders of
his military superiors. Prior to the war he had made his living by
chopping cord-wood in the high, timbered hills near the mouth of
the Illinois river, or by working as a common laborer in the
country on the farms at $14 a month. He was unmarried, his parents
were dead, and he had no other immediate relatives surviving,
either in his fatherland or in the country of his adoption. He and
I enlisted from the same neighbor