Roster and Statistical Record of Company D, of the Eleventh Regiment Maine Infantry Volunteers. Maxfield Albert

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СКАЧАТЬ to their Spring planting. And when there was one false start, the regiment in line, with baggage packed, and all ready for the word of command, then we were ordered back to quarters, there were curses loud and deep, even had been deacons using language that would have shocked the sisters, till the band jocularly struck up "Wait for the wagon and we'll all take a ride," when good nature was restored, proving that music indeed hath soothing charms.

      THE PENINSULA CAMPAIGN

      The afternoon of the 28th of March, the brigade, now the third of General Casey's division of the Fourth Army Corps, General Keyes, commanding, was actually en route for Alexandria; Captain Maxfield's diary says: – "With boots blacked, hands in white gloves and brass shoulder scales on," a campaign guise difficult for the men of '64 to appreciate.

      This was a hard march for green troops, unaccustomed to heavy marching order, with more too than the phrase implies, for besides gun, equipments, forty rounds of cartridges, the knapsacks were not only stuffed with the ordinary kits of soldiers, but were laden with the remains of civilian wardrobes and the accumulations of a winter's garrison duty. I think that no man of D ever reached a more welcome camp ground than the one outside of Alexandria that night. And by the time the newly issued shelter tents were buttoned together, were pitched, and the camp fires were lighted, there were many too weary to care for anything but to creep supperless into their tents, wrap their blankets around them and rest their aching bones. In the morning reveille awoke them to see a Spring snow storm, half rain and half snow beating down, followed by a day of discomfort and another night on a wet camp ground, and glad enough the next afternoon, that of March 30th, were all to get on board the transport Constitution, with all its discomforts of wet decks, on which the men must sleep closely crowded together; four regiments of our brigade, the Eleventh, the 56th and the 100th New York, and the 52d Pennsylvania regiments, with Regan's Battery, jamming the five decked Constitution to its utmost capacity.

      Proceeding to Fortress Monroe, we were ordered to land at Newport News, to which place we were taken by a smaller steamer, the Constitution drawing too many feet of water to be able to reach the landing place. In steaming across the bay the masts of the sunken war ships could be seen standing above the surface of the water telling of the great Naval combat that so lately took place in this placid water. Soon a puff of smoke rolled out from a rebel battery off Sewell's Point, announcing the coming of the first hostile shot. It fell so far short of our steamer that the tell-tale spray of water its plunge threw into the air was received by us with a yell of derision.

      Landing at Newport News the 2d of April, the brigade went into camp, where we remained for a few days owing to lack of wagon transportation. It was here that the men first went on picket. And Captain Maxfield's diary records that there was a rush among them to go on picket duty, probably as great a one as there was in later years to escape such service.

      The 6th of April, we proceeded to Young's Mills, where we occupied the log barracks rebel troops had occupied the previous winter. Here the regiment was paid off, and where they had learned it is a mystery, but it did seem as if not only the men of D but those of every company of the regiment were adepts in the mysteries of the national game; for wherever you went through the thick woods surrounding the barracks you would come across groups of men squatting around the tops of hard bread boxes laid on the ground, and hear such mystic phrases as: – "Ante up or leave the board." "It's your deal." "I raise you five cents." "I see you and go you five better." Some of the men wrecked their available fortunes in a few hours at the game, then would borrow a quarter from some friend and regain all they had lost, only to lose it again before night. Such is the see-saw of fortune.

      The 17th of April, we rejoined the brigade in position before Lee's Mill, on the creek known as the Warwick River. We took a modest part in the siege of Yorktown. I chiefly remember a reconnoissance in which Company D followed a skirmish line as its reserve.

      By company front, trying to keep a perfect alignment, keeping step as if on parade, D crashed through woods and bushes, quite undaunted until a shell came screeching towards them; and as it fell some twenty feet before them, burst in a cloud of smoke and the pieces went flying into the air, our heroes waited with open mouths for half a minute perhaps, certainly quite long enough for all danger to have passed, then at one and the same time each and all, as if by a common impulse, threw themselves flat upon the ground, and digging their noses into the soil, lay there for another full half minute before arising to march on their dignified way.

      Think of that you men of Morris Island, to whom flying shot and shells became a matter of course, of no more consequence than beans from a bean shooter. But that was your first shell, and 'twas long before you had heard the warning cries of "Jim Island" and "Sullivan," long before those names had become so familiar to you as to have hardened your nerves to comparative indifference.

      It was in this reconnoissance that the first man of the regiment was killed, Private Mace, of Company A. As the first man of the regiment killed, his body had a fascination for all of us as it lay in camp, and few of us but were awe struck as we looked upon the waxen face of our comrade, now drained of blood, but yesterday blooming with health and spirits, struck dead in a second as if by a thunderbolt. The only other matter for record here is our being called out early one morning to stand to arms and listen to the attack a portion of the Vermont brigade made on the dam across the Warwick, known as Dam No. 1. Though the charging and the answering yells, the crash of musketry and the booming of cannon came to us, out of danger, but as the crash and uproar of a distant thunder shower, yet it was so suggestive of what was going on in the semi-darkness beyond the intervening woods, that it gave some of us a dread foreboding that the time was really near at hand when we must be active participants in just such bits of the bloody game of war.

      We were not in the trenches before Yorktown at any time except as individuals. Then to creeping to the outer works and watching the slow operations of the siege, we much preferred to sit in the interior works and listen to the blood-curdling tales of the so-called California sharpshooters, the butts of whose rifles were notched to their utmost capacity, each notch representing a dead rebel, according to its owner's statement, but as it was estimated that the combined notches on the butts of their rifles outnumbered the entire rebel force under Magruder, it is more probable that they bore quite as much testimony to the mendacious abilities of the story tellers as to their sharp shooting ones.

      One fine May morning, that of the 4th, it was known that Magruder had evacuated Yorktown the night before, and under the command of our new brigade commander, Brigadier General Henry M. Naglee, we were in quick pursuit. We crossed the rebel lines at Lee's Mills, which fortified position we gallantly carried without loss in the absence of the flying enemy.

      As the different commands of our army moved forward, they converged on the road leading from Yorktown to Williamsburg with the result that this road was soon packed with horse, foot and artillery, all pushing eagerly forward, and without overmuch regards for right of way.

      Company D, holding the right of the regiment, was a pleased auditor to a little conversation between Colonel Caldwell and the irate commander of a regiment the Eleventh had unceremoniously displaced. The displaced commander was evidently, by manner and seat in the saddle, a regular officer, which then meant among other things, an officer with large ideas of his own importance as a trained military man, and small ones of all volunteer officers.

      "Sir," roared he, riding up to Colonel Caldwell, "How dare you march across the head of my command?"

      The Colonel looked at him in his large placid way, without answering him, much as a mastiff looks at a snarling terrier.

      "Do you know who I am, sir?" yelled the angry commander, now doubly enraged at the elaborate indifference, and the apparently studied silence of our Colonel. "I am Major so-and-so of such and such a regiment."

      "And I," answered Colonel Caldwell, smiling blandly, touching his cap with military courtesy as he spoke, "And I am Colonel John C. Caldwell, commanding the Eleventh СКАЧАТЬ