left and
front, far into the open field, through the wreck of Grover's right,
into the teeth of the pursuing lines of Gordon, Per Lee led his
regiment. No sooner had his men emerged from the cover of the wood
than they came under the fire of Gordon's infantry and artillery,
crossed with the fire of Fitzhugh Lee's guns beyond the Red Bud; yet
they were not able to fire a musket in return until their own defeated
comrades had passed to the rear. Cruel as the situation was, the
114th marched steadily forward nearly two hundred yards in front
of the forest; then, finding itself quite alone and unsupported,
confronted by the line of battle of the enemy at the skirt of the
timber opposite, Per Lee made his men lie down without other cover
than the high grass, and there, loading on their backs and at every
moment losing heavily, without yielding an inch, they held off the
enemy until support came. That this was longer than usual in coming
was no fault of their comrades, but a mere accident of the situation;
for Dwight's division being formed in echelon of battalions on the
right, just as it had in the first instance been necessary to bring
the 114th into action obliquely to the left, so now Beal was forced
to form the line of battle of his brigade by inversion, and this,
moreover, in the woods, with the steep bank of the Red Bud hampering
his right. Slow though it must have seemed to Per Lee, standing
out there alone, this difficult movement was in reality executed
by Beal with great promptness and rapidity and in admirable order.
As regiment after regiment, beginning with the 153d, came into the
new line at the double-quick by the shortest path, each advanced
with a shout to the rail fence on Per Lee's right and somewhat
toward his rear, and, throwing down the rails, opened a rapid fire.
This checked the enemy. Finding Beal unable to cover all the ground
he was now trying to hold, Emory made Dwight take the 160th New
York from McMillan's brigade and posted it on the right of Beal's.

McMillan had been ordered to move forward at the same time as Beal,
and to form on his left. The five companies of the 47th Pennsylvania
that had been detached to form a skirmish line on Red Bud Run, to
cover McMillan's right flank, had somehow lost their way on the
broken ground among the thickets, and, not finding them in place,
McMillan had been obliged to send the remaining companies of the
regiment to do the same duty. This detail an