Showing posts with label Wm G Murray. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wm G Murray. Show all posts

Thursday, March 11, 2010

The Battle of Winchester

Gen. Shields says in his official report of this battle:

The killed and wounded in this engagement can not even yet be accurately ascertained. Indeed my command has been so over worked, that it has had but little time to ascertain anything. The killed as reported, are one hundred and three, among them we have to deplore the loss of the brave Col. Murry, of the eighty-fourth Pennsylvania Volunteers, who fell at the head of his [regiment] while gallantly leading it in the face of the enemy. The wounded are four hundred and forty-one, and the missing at twenty-four. The enemy’s loss is more difficult to ascertain than our own. Two hundred and seventy were found dead on the battle-field. Forty were buried by the inhabitants of the adjacent village, and by a calculation of the number of graves found on both sides of the valley road between here and Strasburg, their loss in killed must have been 500, and wounded 1,000. The proportion between the killed and wounded of the enemy shows the closeness and terrible destructiveness of our fire, nearly half the wounds being fatal. The enemy admit a loss of between 1,000 and 1,500 killed and wounded. Our force in infantry, cavalry, and artillery, did not exceed 7,000. That of the enemy must have exceeded 11,000. Jackson, who commanded on the field, had, in addition to his own stone wall brigade, Smith’s, Garnett’s, and Longstreet’s brigades. Generals Smith and Garnett were here in person.

– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Saturday Morning, April 26, 1862, p. 2