ific, that by eight
o'clock A.M. our reserve line was all there was left and we had to be
sent in. The other three regiments were veterans, old and tried. They
had an established reputation of having never once been forced back or
whipped, but the One Hundred and Thirty-second was new and, except as to
numbers, an unknown quantity. We had been unmercifully guyed during the
two preceding weeks, as I have said before, as a lot of "greenhorns,"
"pretty boys" in "pretty new clothes," "mamma's darlings," etc., etc.,
to the end of the vets' slang calendar. Now that we had proved our metal
under fire, the atmosphere was completely changed. Not the semblance of
another jibe against the One Hundred and Thirty-second Pennsylvania
Volunteers.

We did not know how well we had done, only that we had tried to do our
duty under trying circumstances, until officers and men from other
regiments came flocking over to congratulate and praise us. I didn't
even know we had passed through the fire of a great battle until the
colonel of the Fourteenth Indiana came over to condole with us on the
loss of Colonel Oakford, and incidentally told us that this was
undoubtedly the greatest battle of the war thus far, and that we
probably would never have such another.

After getting into our new position, I at once began to look up our
losses. I learned that Colonel Oakford was killed by one of the rebel
sharp-shooters just as the regiment scaled the fence in its advance up
the knoll, and before we had fired a shot. It must have occurred almost
instantly after I left him with orders for the left of the line. I was
probably the last to whom he spoke. He was hit by a minie-ball in the
left shoulder, just below the collar-bone. The doctor said the ball had
severed one of the large arteries, and he died in a very few minutes. He
had been in command of the regiment a little more than a month, but
during that brief time his work as a disciplinarian and drill-master had
made it possible for us to acquit ourselves as creditably as they all
said we had done. General Kimball was loud in our praise and greatly
lamented Colonel Oakford's death, whom he admired very much. He was a
brave, able, and accomplished officer and gentleman, and his loss to the
regiment was irreparable.

Had Colonel Oakford lived his record must have been brilliant and his
promotion rapid, for very few volunteer officers had so quickly mastered
the details of military tactics and routi