“‘Our Brigade,’ which we discovered, was now commanded by ‘Old Whiskers’ (Colonel Piles, of the Seventy-Eighth Ohio.  I’ll bet he’s got the longest whiskers of any man in the Army.) You see General Scott had not been seen or heard of since he had started to the rear after our regiment when the fighting first commenced.  We all believed that he was either killed or captured, or he would have been with his command.  He was a splendid soldier, and a bull-dog of a fighter.  His absence was a great loss, but we had not much time to think of such things, for our brigade was then ordered to leave the works and to move to the right about twenty or thirty rods across a large ravine, where we were placed in position in an open corn-field, forming a new line at quite an angle from the line of works we had just left, extending to the left, and getting us back nearer onto a line with the Sixteenth Corps.  The battery of howitzers, now reinforced by a part of the Third Ohio heavy guns, still occupied the old works on the highest part of the hill, just to the right of our new line.  We took our position just on the brow of a hill, and were ordered to lie down, and the rear rank to go for rails, which we discovered a few rods behind us in the shape of a good ten-rail fence.  Every rear-rank chap came back with all the rails he could lug, and we barely had time to lay them down in front of us, forming a little barricade of six to eight or ten inches high, when we heard the most unearthly Rebel yell directly in front of us.  It grew louder and came nearer and nearer, until we could see a solid line of the gray coats coming out of the woods and down the opposite slope, their battle flags flying, officers in front with drawn swords, arms at right shoulder, and every one of them yelling like so many Sioux Indians.  The line seemed to be massed six or eight ranks deep, followed closely by the second line, and that by the third, each, if possible, yelling louder and appearing more desperately reckless than the one ahead.  At their first appearance we opened on them, and so did the bully old twenty-four-pounders, with canister.

“On they came; the first line staggered and wavered back on to the second, which was coming on the double quick.  Such a raking as we did give them.  Oh, Lordy, how we did wish that we had the breech loading Spencers or Winchesters.  But we had the old reliable Springfields, and we poured it in hot and heavy.  By the time the charging column got down the opposite slope, and were struggling through the thicket of undergrowth in the ravine, they were one confused mass of officers and men, the three lines now forming one solid column, which made several desperate efforts to rush up to the top of the hill where we were punishing them so.  One of their first surges came mighty near going right over the left of our Regiment, as they were lying down behind their little rail piles.  But the boys clubbed their guns and the officers used their revolvers and swords and drove them back down the hill.