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Chapter 31: after the battle.
Hundreds of the enemy fired their last round, dropped their muskets and surrendered themselves as prisoners of war rather than run the chance of getting safely back to their lines under the fire of the
Union guns over the 1580 yards of open plain.
Most of the remaining men of the regiment pushed ahead, directly through the grove and over the fence into the field beyond.
This was covered by dead and wounded rebels, and the men were here exposed to the fire of the enemy's artillery which opened as soon as their infantry retired.
A few of the men got behind some large rocks in an angle of the stone wall and fired on the retreating rebels as long as they remained in view.
A number of the rebel prisoners were quite communicative.
One had been shot through the fleshy part of the leg, below the knee and was wondering how he could get to the rear.
He was told to take two muskets for crutches, as there were plenty lying about.
He was afraid that some of the men would take them away from him, but someone got him a couple and he hobbled away.
One prisoner declared that
Gen. Lee had said that a fly could not live under the shelling of his artillery and that most of the
Union troops there were
Pennsylvania militia, and, as evidence of this, called the attention of his men to the large number of new colors in the
Union line.
(The fact is that many regiments had received new sets of colors during the spring.
The Nineteenth Massachusetts had a new set.) ‘But,’ said the soldier, ‘when I got up to the stone wall and saw that damned white club (pointing to the trefoil on the cap of one of the men), I knew that the whole Army of the Potomac was here and I just dropped my gun and gave up.’
The brave old Nineteenth Massachusetts, which entered
