mmediately sent along the line to assemble on
the right. The Sixteenth Maine will relieve us. Colonel Pattee mounts
his horse.

"Fall in!"

"Right face!"

"Forward, double quick, march!"

We plunge into the woods, following the road toward the left. Shells
crash through the trees, and bullets patter around like hail. The left
of the division was flanked and hopelessly turned. The right was
stubbornly resisting, but giving way before the overpowering force that
was crowding down upon it. We halted and faced the front, advancing a
short distance from the road toward the fighting. Wounded men were
limping past. We could see the smoke through the trees, and the men
slowly yielding, fighting as they came.

Colonel Pattee gave an order, but we could not hear a word. We all knew
what it ought to be, and instantly deployed. The line, broken and
shattered, went back past us, and we met the enemy with the rapid fire
of our repeating rifles. We brought them to a stand in our front. If
fresh troops could have been thrown in on our left, the disaster could
have been retrieved at this point, and the rebel charge hurled back;
but our flanks were exposed, and we were many times outnumbered, and in
danger of being surrounded. There was nothing left but to get out of
that the best we could.

Colonel Pattee rode to and fro along the line, mounted on his bay horse,
encouraging and directing his men, steadying and inspiring them by word
and example. Under a less devoted commander we would have been captured
or driven ingloriously from the field. Before we reached the edge of the
woods, the enemy had inclosed us in the form of a V, and were pouring
their fire upon us from the front and both flanks. We brought out most
of our wounded, but some had to be abandoned. Except these, not a man
was taken prisoner. Reaching the edge of the woods, I knew that no stand
could be made before crossing the branch of Gravelly Run. I "stood not
upon the order of my going," but went at once, and at a lively pace.
Colonel Pattee was the last man to leave the woods. He came down across
the narrow field, crouching close to the neck of his horse, which was
reeling and staggering from wounds out of which his life-blood gushed at
every plunge. Leaping from the back of his dying steed, he rallied his
men on foot.

The trees on the side of the ridge which sloped down to the stream
opposite the open ground in which we had intrenched on the 30th,
afforded exc