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on us, with solid shot, several of which came ricocheting round us. I recollect I turned just then and saw Charlie Mills sitting on horseback, near General Humphreys.
He nodded and smiled at me. Immediately after, General Meade rode to a rising ground a couple of hundred yards from the house, while General Humphreys went a short distance to the front, in the field.
Almost at that instant a round shot passed through Humphreys' Staff and struck Mills in the side, and he fell dead from his horse.
He was indeed an excellent and spirited young man and beloved by us all. . . . When I rode that evening to the hospital, and saw the poor boy lying there on the ground, it made me think of Abbot, a year ago. It is the same thing over and over again.
And strange too, this seeing a young man in full flush of robust health, and the next moment nothing that we can make out but the broken machine that the soul once put in motion.
Yet this is better than that end in which the faculties, once brilliant, gradually fade, month after month.
About noon, Miles and Griffin went in, with sharp firing, drove the enemy back, and made a lodgment on the White Oak road.
Meantime, Sheridan, after all sorts of mud toils, got north of Dinwiddie, where he was attacked by a heavy force of infantry and cavalry and forced back nearly to that place.
Not to forgo our advantage on the northwest, we immediately sent the whole 5th Corps by night to Dinwiddie to report to General Sheridan and attack the enemy next morning — a hard march after the two days fighting in the storm!
April 1, 1865
You will see the April Fool was on the Rebels; for they did not know that, the night before, we had sent down an 