Page:Journal history of the Twenty-ninth Ohio veteran volunteers, 1861-1865.djvu/108

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

incessantly. As night again shrouds the bloody field the Twenty-ninth regiment, with the exception of company B, which was on the skirmish line, relieved the Seventh Ohio, One Hundred and Ninth, and One Hundred and Forty-seventh Pennsylvania. The rebels were unusually quiet during the night. Company B remained on the skirmish nearly all of the following day and was kept hotly engaged. The company's position was not more than eight rods from the rebel outposts, who made it extremely hot for us as we went back and forth to the relief of our comrades, and sometimes unsoldierly attitudes were assumed to evade their deadly aim. Late in the day company B was relieved. Henry Brainard, Spencer Atkin, and Henry Clark volunteered to go out and bring in the bodies of Albert Atkin, C. A. Davis, and Jerome Phinney, which they did, the enemy opening fire upon them with musketry and artillery, the deadly missiles flying thick and fast about them. Such was the treatment of the "chivalry" to men bravely exposing themselves to give Christian interment to the gallant men who had fought their last battle. However, none were injured. While performing the last sad rites of burial, the rebels came out in a sortie and made furious assaults along our entire line. Our men reserved their fire until the enemy were close upon them, when, at a given signal, some twenty cannon, double shotted with grape, opened fire, which made the earth tremble with their awful thunder, while the infantry sent deadly volleys into their ranks. The result of this fire was most terrible slaughter to the enemy, who broke and ran anywhere to cover, leaving several hundred dead and dying behind, the ground between the two lines being literally covered with the rebel dead. During the 30th there were several sharp fights, our regiment having several men wounded. May