Waitt, Ernest Linden, History of the Nineteenth regiment, Massachusetts volunteer infantry , 1861-1865

Corp. DeCastro's further reward was one of the four special medals struck by order of the Secretary of War for extraordinary gallant conduct.

A private of Co. F, captured a rebel color and staff, and passed it to Major Rice, who being wounded, was passing to the rear. Major Rice used the staff as a cane and on arriving at the Field Hospital gave it into the hands of General Hancock, who was lying in an ambulance at the hospital.

Although organizations were more or less broken up and confusion reigned everywhere, most of the men of the Nineteenth gathered about its colors, thus, in a measure, holding its identity. Col. Mallon and the Forty-Second New York had by this time wrapped around the right of the grove a little. The opposing lines were standing as if rooted, dealing death into each other. There they stood and would not move.

Foot to foot, body to body and man to man they struggled, pushed, and strived and killed. Each had rather die than yield. The mass of wounded and heaps of dead entangled the feet of the contestants, and, underneath the trampling mass, wounded men who could no longer stand, struggled, fought, shouted and killed—hatless, coatless, drowned in sweat, black with powder, red with blood, stifling in the horrid heat, parched with smoke and blind with dust, with fiendish yells and strange oaths they blindly plied the work of slaughter.

Remember you who hold dear the glory of ambitious wars, that on every field where glory has been won or lost there has been a scene like this!

The gallant Vermont brigade closed in upon the right flank of the great column in front. Woodruff advanced his battery far out upon the plain in front of Howard's corps and opened fire upon their left rear. Hancock had fallen, Hayes and Gibbon both were wounded.

Brave Webb called out to ‘Charge!’ Suddenly in the midst of the awful carnage, the National color of the Nineteenth Massachusetts was seen to fall, but it was instantly raised in the hands of Lieut. Moses Shackley, of Co. B. Lieut. Herman Donath, with the other color, fell dead and then Shackley was