Part 21 (1/2)
”Form your men to the right,” I said. ”It looks as if your aid would be very acceptable.”
”I have no cartridges. We have shot them all away.”
”You have sabers.”
”Yes, and by ---- they are loaded,” he retorted, as he brought his men front into line on the right.
Captain Brittain survived the war and came to Michigan to live. He often has sent me kindly reminders of his remembrance of the circ.u.mstances as narrated above. For many years he had a home in Wexford county, and I last heard of him as prospering on the Pacific coast.
At that moment, the thing had a critical look. We were inside a horseshoe of infantry, the extremities of which very nearly reached the river. We had to go through that line, or through the river, or surrender. Breckinridge's line was in plain sight, not a half mile away, in the open and moving up in splendid order. So far as I am informed, Custer was the only man in the command who knew that there was a ford and that we were making for it. The rest were s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g their courage up to the task of breaking through. I never have ceased to admire the nerve exhibited by Captain Brittain, when I told him it looked as if that was what we would have to do. He was an excellent officer and belonged to an excellent regiment.
”My sabers are loaded.”
The greatest coolness was displayed by General Custer and his entire command. There was not a hint of weakness or fear in any quarter. The brigade, at each falling back, ployed from line into column and deployed into line again, as if on parade, with Breckinridge and his corps for the spectators. Every movement was at a walk. There was no haste--no confusion. Every officer was on his mettle and every man a hero.
Presently, Custer finally withdrew his battery, then the regiments one at a time, and slipped away into Maryland before the enemy realized what he was doing.
The delicate duty of bringing up the rear was entrusted to Colonel Alger with his own regiment and the Sixth. I was ordered to report to him. The battery crossed first, then the First and Seventh, the brigade staff and general commanding.
The two regiments stood in line, watching the enemy closing in closer and closer until this was accomplished. Then Colonel Alger told me to go. He followed leisurely and, as the Fifth and Sixth were marching up the Maryland bank, a line of confederates came up on the other side, and so astounded were they to see how we had escaped from their grasp, that some of them actually cheered, so I have been informed. They had been deceived by the audacity of Custer and his men in the first place and by the cleverness with which they eluded capture in the second.
The battle of Shepherdstown was the last in which Colonel Alger was engaged. While the brigade was lying in camp on the Maryland side awaiting orders, he was taken sick and was sent to hospital by order of the brigade surgeon. He was a.s.signed to special duty by order of President Lincoln and did not rejoin. The esteem in which he was held by General Custer and the confidence which that officer reposed in him to the last moment of his service in the brigade is amply evidenced by the selection of him to lead the attack on Kershaw at Front Royal and to bring up the rear at Shepherdstown. The coolness and ability of the officers and the intrepidity of the men in the Michigan cavalry brigade were never more thoroughly tested than in those two battles. Custer was the hero of both and Alger was his right arm. At Meadow Bridge, at Yellow Tavern and in all the battles of that eventful campaign, wherever they were a.s.sociated together, wherever the one wanted a man tried, true, trained and trustworthy, there he would put the other. No misunderstandings that arose later can alter the significance or break the force of these cold facts.
In the battle of Shepherdstown Captain Frederick Augustus Buhl, of the First Michigan was mortally wounded, dying a few days later. He was a Detroit boy, and a cla.s.smate of mine in Ann Arbor when the war broke out. I was deeply grieved at his death as I had learned to love him like a brother. He was conspicuous for his gallantry in all the engagements in which he partic.i.p.ated, especially at Front Royal and Shepherdstown.
For two days the brigade was lost. For a time the report of its capture was generally credited. That it escaped, no thanks were due to General Torbert, the chief of cavalry. It is not likely that he knew anything about what a predicament he had left Custer in. The latter was, as usual, equal to the emergency.
I must pa.s.s now rapidly over a period of nearly a month, devoted, for the most part, to reconnoitering and retreating, to the eve of the battle of Winchester.
September 18, about 8 o'clock in the evening, I went to headquarters to consult Dr. Wooster, brigade surgeon, about the condition of my health.
I was very feeble, unable to eat, my eyes and skin the color of certain newspapers during the Spanish-American war. The doctor told me I must go home and insisted on making out a certificate of disability, on which I might obtain a ”leave of absence.” General Custer and most of his staff were present. I recall the circ.u.mstances very well, for a conversation in which the general asked me confidentially certain questions, was incautiously repeated by some one who was present and returned to vex me after many years. I returned to my own camp about nine or half past nine, much cast down over the doctor's diagnosis of my case. I mention all this to show how secretly the preparations for the eventful next day had been made. Not a word was dropped during my long interview with the general and his staff to arouse the suspicion that the army was about to attack Early. Yet, at midnight, orders were received to be ready to move at two o'clock in the morning. Before that hour, horses were in line saddled, the men ready to mount. My cook made a cup of tea and a slice of toast. I drank half of the tea but could not eat the toast. At three o'clock I mounted my favorite saddle horse ”Billy” and by order of General Custer, led my regiment in advance of the division, toward Locke's Ford on the Opequon creek. Nothing was said, but every one knew that the army was in motion and that great things were in store for us.
[Ill.u.s.tration: BATTLE FIELD OF WINCHESTER VA.]
We neared the ford about daylight. There was a faint hope that the enemy might be taken by surprise and the ford captured without resistance, as it was a difficult crossing when bravely defended. In this, however, we were doomed to disappointment, for an alert foe was found awaiting the attack. Indeed, they must have known of the federal approach. Halting an eighth of a mile back and out of sight, Custer directed me to dismount the regiment and move in column of fours through a ravine at right angles with the creek. This ravine ran out at the top, where it reached the edge of a plowed field. This field extended some 100 or 150 yards to the crest overlooking the ford. Along the crest were fences, outbuildings, and the farm house. Thence, there was an abrupt descent to the bed of the Opequon Creek. This side hill slope consisted of cleared fields divided by fences. The hill where the house and barns were, also sloped off to the left. The road to the ford skirted the hill to the left till it reached the bank, then ran parallel with the creek to a point about on a line with the farm house, where it turned to the left and, crossing the stream, took a serpentine course up the opposite slope. This latter was wooded and dotted on both sides of the road with piles of rails behind which were posted infantry sharpshooters.
The leading files had barely reached the summit, at the edge of the plowed ground, when the enemy opened fire on the head of the column of fours, before the regiment had debouched. There was momentary confusion, as the sharpshooters appeared to have the exact range. The regiment deployed forward into line under fire, and with General Custer by my side we charged across the field to the crest. Custer was the only mounted man in the field. Reaching the houses and fences, the Sixth proceeded to try to make it as uncomfortable for the confederates as they had been doing for us. General Custer had gone back to direct the movements of the other regiments which were still under cover in the rear.
The charge prostrated me. I succeeded in getting across the field, cheered on by the gallant Custer, who rode half way, but then fell down and for a minute or two could not stand on my feet. I suppose my pale face and weak condition made a very fair presentment of a colonel demoralized by fright. It was a case of complete physical exhaustion.
While it is probably for the most part moral rather than physical courage that spurs men into battle, it is equally true that good health and a sound body are a good background for the display of moral courage.
If any of my friends think that jaundice and an empty stomach are a good preparation for leading a charge across a plowed field in the face of an intrenched foe I hope that they never may be called upon to put their belief to the proof.
Custer then sent orders to engage the enemy as briskly as possible and directed the Twenty-fifth New York[35] followed by the Seventh Michigan, to take the ford mounted. The attempt was a failure, however, for the head of the New York regiment after pa.s.sing the defile around the left, when it reached the crossing, instead of taking it, kept on and, circling to the right, came back to the point from which it started; thus, in effect, reversing the role of the French army which charged up a hill and then charged down again. The Seventh Michigan having received orders to follow the other regiment, obeyed and did not see the mistake until too late to rectify it, much to the chagrin of that gallant officer, Lieutenant Colonel Brewer, who commanded it, and who later in the day, laid down his life.
The First Michigan was then ordered up to make the attempt. That regiment moved in column down the road to the foot of the hill at the left and halted. Two squadrons, commanded by Captain George R. Maxwell, an officer of the most undoubted courage, were detailed as an advance guard to lead the charge. Some minutes pa.s.sed and the sharpshooters began to annoy the mounted men of the First. Major Howrigan, of that regiment, thinking that the Sixth ought to occupy the attention of the enemy so completely as to s.h.i.+eld his men from annoyance, galloped up to where I was, and excitedly asked if we could not make it hotter for them.
”They are shooting my men off their horses,” he shouted. As he halted to deliver this message, a bullet struck the saddlebag in rear of his left leg. Reaching back he unbuckled the strap, lifted the flap, and pulling out a cork inserted in the neck of what had been a gla.s.s flask, exclaimed: ”Blankety blank their blank souls, they have broken my whisky bottle.” Saying which, he wheeled and galloped back through a shower of whistling bullets.
General Custer then sent orders by a staff officer for the Sixth to advance dismounted and support the charge of the First. The Seventh was also brought up mounted to charge the ford at the same time.
Preparations for this final attack were just about completed when it was discovered that the confederates were leaving their cover and falling back. Lowell had effected a crossing at another ford and was threatening the flank of the force in our front. The Sixth moved forward with a cheer. All the regiments advanced to the attack simultaneously, and the crossing of the Opequon was won. A sharp fight followed on the other side with Early's infantry in which a portion of the First Michigan led by the gallant Captain Maxwell made a most intrepid charge on infantry posted in the woods behind a rail fence.
The cavalry soon had the force opposed to it fleeing toward Winchester, but making a stand from time to time, so that it took from daylight in the morning until nearly three o'clock in the afternoon to cover the distance of three or four miles between the crossing of the Opequon and the outskirts of the town after which the battle has been named, though, perhaps, it is more correctly styled ”The battle of the Opequon.”