In a recent letter received from Captain E.A.  Crawford, he says the enemy formed three times to charge, but we gave them a well directed volley each time and sent them into the rear line in our trench.  When Mahone came in and formed my three companies charged with him.  Colonel Smith told me they charged four times.  Cusack Moore, a very intelligent private of Company K, said they charged five times.  After the charge Captain Crawford requested General Mahone to give him permission to report to his regiment, and he ordered him to report to General Sanders, and he joined in that charge with his men.  Company K had fifty-three men, Captain Cherry; Company E, forty, and Captain Burley, Company B, twenty-five; in all, one hundred and eighteen men.

Lieutenant Colonel Culp was a member of a military court doing duty in Petersburg at the time of the explosion, and could not get back until he reported to me at Elliott’s headquarters.  I made some extracts from his letter recently received:  “I recollect well that in the charge (the final one) which we made that model soldier and Christian gentleman, Sergeant Williams, of Company K, was killed, and that one of the Crowders, of Company B, was killed in elbow touch of me after we got into the works.  These casualties, I think, well established the fact that Companies K and B were with me in the charge, and, as far as I know now, at least a portion of all the companies were with me.  I recollect that poor Fant was with as very distinctly, and that he rendered very efficient service after we got to the ‘Crater’ in ferreting out hidden Federals, who had taken shelter there, and who, for the most part, seemed very loath to leave their biding places.  I feel quite confident that Capt.  Crawford was also there, but there is nothing that I can recall at this late day to fasten the fact of his presence on my mind, except that he was always ready for duty, however perilous it might be, and I am sure his company was there, in part at least.  So, too, this will apply to all of the officers of our regiment whose duty it was to be there on that occasion, and who were not unavoidably kept away.  In the charge that we made we were to be supported by the Sixty-first North Carolina.  They were on our left, and I suppose entered the works entirely to the left of the ‘Crater,’ for I am sure that our regiment, small as it was, covered the ‘Crater,’ and when I reached the old line with my command we found ourselves in the very midst of the old fort, which, I may say, had been blown to atoms in the early morning.  When we arrived the Federals began, in some instances, to surrender to us voluntarily, others, as before intimated, had to be pulled out of their hiding places.  And with these prisoners we captured quite a number of colors, probably as many as a dozen, certainly not less than eight or ten.  I was so occupied in trying to clear the trenches of the enemy that I gave no attention to these colors after they fell into the hands of our men, and afterwards