It still continues
to rain a little, but for all this the Second, Sixth and Eighteenth Corps in
the order mentioned from right to left, were ordered to charge at 4 o'clock a.
m. and not to fire a shot until we got on to the enemy's works, but the charge
was not a success. We never even reached the enemy's works. The attack
commenced on the right and ran along the line until it reached the left. We
advanced under a murderous fire in our front from the enemy's artillery,
sharpshooters and when in range of its main line of battle and were simply
slaughtered. We have lost to-day over 4,000 in killed and wounded. The total
casualties June first and third have been 12,000, of which about 10,000 have
been killed and wounded. The number killed in the Tenth Vermont since Tuesday
is twenty-two and one hundred and twenty-nine wounded; and in Company K to-day
one killed and five wounded. Two killed and nine wounded in two days greatly
weakens my command. Captains Lucius T. Hunt and Pearl D. Blodgett were wounded,
and Captain E. B. Frost was shot through the head and killed after the assault,
by a sharpshooter. The Tenth Vermont lost sixty-two to-day in killed and
wounded. We are now intrenching and ordered to act on the defensive. The men of
Company K are cool, splendid fighters.
As I sat on the
ground this morning with my back against a sapling in the woods, a sharpshooter
planked a bullet in the ground about an inch from the calf of my right leg
which covered me with flying dirt. He could see my blue pants through the green
foliage. I moved. Colonel Schall who was wounded in the arm in the assault on
June first and carried it in a sling in the fight to-day, was again wounded in
the same arm. He is not a man to take advantage of a wound not totally
disabling him to get out of a fight, evidently.
SOURCE: Lemuel
Abijah Abbott, Personal Recollections and Civil War Diary, 1864, p.
74-5
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