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had borne bloody laurels from that stricken field; Charles Devereux limped with pain; Jewett bore four wounds from the affray, and Mumford and Robinson, it was sadly felt, would never march again.
There were many peculiar incidents of the battle, among the men of the regiment.
Capt. John C. Chadwick, of Co. C, had received a letter just as he started into the fight and had put it into his pocket without reading.
After the battle he drew it from his pocket in two pieces, cut in twain, as if by a knife, by a minie ball which had passed through his knapsack.
Lieut. Newcomb had been left mortally wounded upon the field and after the men reached a place of safety behind the fence, Capt. Chadwick with First Sergt. Wallace T. George, of Co. C, dashed back upon the field to get him. ‘Don't touch my legs’ cried Newcomb, as they undertook to lift him. They took him by the arms, and, dragging his legs along the ground amid a shower of bullets, they got him through the fence, put him on a stetcher and sent him across the river to the Lacy House, where he died a week later.
That accomplished soldier, Gen. Couch, says the men were asked to conquer an impossibility.
Gen. Longstreet says: ‘The charges had been desperate and bloody, but utterly hopeless.
I thought, as I saw the Federals come again and again to their death, that they deserved success, if courage and daring could entitle soldiers to victory.’
General Longstreet described the defence of Marye's Heights as follows:
‘An idea of how well Marye's Heights was protected may be obtained from the following incident: Gen. E. P. Alexander, my engineer and superintendent of artillery, had been placing the guns, and, in going over the field with him before the battle, I noticed an idle cannon.
I suggested that he place it so as to aid in covering the field in front of Marye's Hill.
He answered, “General, we cover that ground now so well that we will comb it as if with a fine comb.
A chicken could not live on that field when we open on it.”
Gen. Lee, who was with me on Lee's Hill, became uneasy when he saw the attacks so promptly renewed and pushed forward with such persistence, and feared ’
Salem Press. Co., Salem, Ma., 1906.
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