andkerchief around
his head, his hair drenched with blood, we picked him up and carried him
back about a mile, when to our surprise we got into a road and there
found an ambulance. Putting him in it, he was carried to the hospital,
in the rear. Strange to say, he lived about ten days, giving his father
time to come from Loudoun county to see him before he died. About this
same time his younger brother Henry (at home) was blown to pieces by a
shell that he had picked up in the field on his father's farm and was
trying to open it, to see what was inside.

But to return to the battle. This state of things continued for two
whole days, with little intermission. Sometimes, however, there was not
a shot fired for an hour.

During one of these intervals I remember sitting down, leaning my back
against a large tree, and began writing a letter to my folks at home.
Capt. Gibson came up to me and said, "Young man, if you don't want to
get shot, you'd better get on the other side of that tree, for somewhere
just in front of us, and not a great distance off, is the enemy's
skirmish line, and they may open fire at any moment." I moved behind the
tree and resumed my writing, but was suddenly stopped by the sound of
firing in our front, that caused us to creep farther back into the
woods.

On another occasion we had fallen back out of the timber into the open
fields, and were firing from behind a fence at the enemy in the woods,
whom we could not see for the undergrowth. Our attention was called to a
large body of cavalry on our left, apparently the enemy on mischief
bent.

There are times in a battle when every private soldier on the firing
line becomes a "Commander-in-Chief." It is when orders cannot be given,
or would not be heard if they were. Each soldier seems to know
intuitively what to do, and the whole line acts in concert.

At this particular time the body of cavalry on our left proved to be the
bluecoats, moving toward our rear. It did not take long for the
information to spread up and down the line, and at once every man in the
ranks, in absence of any orders from headquarters, concluded that the
thing to do was to fall back. So each soldier gave the order to himself,
and quicker than it takes time to tell it, the line was moving back over
the fields.

We had retreated perhaps 200 yards when the movement was noticed by Gen.
Fitzhugh Lee. He came galloping toward us on his white horse, and with a
voice that could be