As the sun was setting on that doleful day, Company A was ordered forward to the skirmish-line.  We deployed and marched down the hill in front of the Seminary.  Cemetery Height was crowned with cannon and intrenched infantry.  The wheat field on its slope was alive with skirmishers whose shots dropped amongst us as we advanced.  Down our hill and into the hollow; there the fire increased and we lay flat on the ground.  Our skirmish-line was some two or three hundred yards in front of us, in the wheat on the slope of the ascent.  Twilight had come.

Just on my left a brigade advanced up the hill through the wheat; what for, nobody knew and nobody will ever know[9].  It was Ramseur’s brigade of Rodes’s division.

[9] Ramseur’s was the extreme right brigade of Ewell’s corps, which at the moment was making an attack upon Culp’s Hill. [ED.]

Company A advanced and united to Company C’s left.  I was now the left guide of the battalion.  I saw no pickets at my left.  I thought it likely that the brigade advancing had taken the skirmishers into its ranks.

Ramseur’s men continued to go forward up the hill through the wheat.  We could yet see them, but indistinctly.  They began firing and shouting; they charged the Federal army.  What was expected of them?  It seemed absurd; perhaps it was a feint.  The flashes of many rifles could be seen.  Suddenly the brigade came running back down, the hill, helter-skelter, every man for himself.  They passed us, and went back toward the main lines on Seminary Ridge.

It was my duty to connect our left with the right of the pickets of the next brigade.  But I saw nobody.  Ramseur had left no picket in these parts.  His men had gone, all of them, except those who had remained and must remain in the wheat farther up the hill.

Where was the picket-line to which ours must connect?  I made a circuit to my left, a hundred yards or more; no pickets.  I returned and passed word down the line to the lieutenant in command of Company A that I wanted to see him on the left.  He came, and I explained the trouble.  The lieutenant did not know what to do.  This gentleman was a valuable officer in the line, but was out of place in the battalion.  He asked me what ought to be done.  I replied that we must not fail to connect, else there would be a gap in the line, and how wide a gap nobody could tell.  If I had known then what I know now, I should have told him to report the condition to Colonel Perrin, who was in command of the brigade, but I did otherwise; I told him that if he would remain on the left, I would hunt for the picket-line.  He consented.

I first went to the left very far, and then to the rear and searched a long time, but found nobody.  I returned to the left of Company A and proposed to go forward through the wheat and hunt for our pickets.  The lieutenant approved.

The word was passed down the line that I was going to the front.  I moved slowly up the hill through the wheat.  There was a moon, over which bunches of cloud passed rapidly.  While the moon would be hidden I went forward.  When the cloud had passed, I stooped and looked.  Here and there in the wheat lay dead skirmishers, and guns, and many signs of battle.  The wheat had been trodden down.