previous next

No. 202.-report of Col. Eli S. Shorter, Eighteenth Alabama Infantry.

Hdqrs., camp of the Third Brig., Withers' Div., Second Corps, Army of the Mississippi, Near Corinth, Miss., April 9, 1862.
Sir: Inclosed I have the honor to submit to you a report of the casualties that occurred to my regiment in the great historic battle at Shiloh Church, on Sunday, the 6th instant:

The number of non-commissioned officers and privates actually engaged in the first battle was only 413. During this long-continued fight of about one hour and upwards my men nearly exhausted the 50 rounds of cartridges that had previously been distributed to them. A considerable number of the men had none whatever left. By order of General Jackson, after the enemy had been routed and we were advancing, I sent back to the ammunition train and procured a new supply. The regiment was actively engaged in all the battles during that day in which the brigade participated.

Our loss was very heavy, to wit:

Killed20
Wounded80
Missing20
Total120

Most of those classed among the missing doubtless were taken prisoners by the enemy, as they were with Dr. Barnett, our surgeon, who was captured on Monday while attending to the wounded. It is reported to me on good authority that the enemy fired on Dr. Barnett and his party while under the yellow flag and when the surgeon was actually engaged in dressing the wounds of one of the enemy.

The officers (with but one exception) and men of the regiment conducted themselves throughout the several engagements with much gallantry and spirit.

Lieutenant [E. J.] Rogers, who was in command of Company B, abandoned his company twice and wholly disappeared from the field. He is now here in arrest, and proper charges will be filed against him.

Lieutenant-Colonel Holtzclaw was dangerously wounded in the first engagement while he was gallantly discharging his duty.

Respectfully, &c.,

Eli S. Shorter, Colonel Eighteenth Alabama Regiment. Capt. J. B. Cummings, Assistant Adjutant-General.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: