[Illustration]

Each line in the diagram represents about 15 men all facing "front." In
this order we had bivouacked and marched to Sam Poffenberger's field, only
that while in the ten acre corn field every man turned on his left heel
and marched toward what had been the "left," until arriving in Sam
Poffenberger's field, where a turn of each man to his right, or the
technical "front," brought us to our original position.

Apparently fifty to a hundred Confederates were strung along the fence (M)
firing at us. They had the immense advantage that they could rest their
rifles on the fence and fire into us, massed ten ranks deep, while we
could only march and "take it."

It was high time to deploy,[7] and Col. Beal proposed to do so, but Gen.
Mansfield said "No," and remarked that a regiment can be easier handled
"in mass" than "in line"; which is very true in the abstract. Gen.
Mansfield then rode away, and Col. Beal, hardly waiting for him to get out
of sight, ordered the regiment to deploy in double quick time. Everybody
felt the need of haste.

In the execution of this order Companies I and G, with the color guard,
continued marching straight ahead at the ordinary step, just as if no
order had been given. The men of Co's F, C, D and B turned to their left
and ran east--toward Sam Poffenberger's Co's H, A, K and E turned to the
right and ran west--toward the Smoketown road. As fast as the respective
companies "uncovered," they came to "Front" and advanced to the front,
still running. In other words, after Co. B had run east and Co. E west,
the length of their company, each man turned to the front (or the woods)
and the company ran till B was left of G, and E was right of I, which
being done B and E quit running and took up the ordinary step. It will be
seen that D had twice as far to run to the east, and K twice as far to the
west, and that C and A ran three times, and F and H four times as far as B
and E had done.

I have been so circumstantial in describing all this for two reasons.
First, because standing to-day on the battle line of the 10th Maine (which
is the position the enemy occupied at the time the 10th was deploying),
and looking over the fence northeast into Sam Poffenberger's field, as the
Confederates did, one will see how it was that when the 10th Me., with
about 300[8] men, came to deploy and to advance afterward, the Smoketown
fence, and the trees of Beal and Goss, with "the bushes," were an o