When we came in sight of the struggling combatants we were informed that the left wing of our army was retiring under a terrible fire from the right of the enemy, and we were ordered into an open field at double-quick to sustain them. We crossed a ravine, and then came forward by companies into line, the right of our regiment resting in the head of a hollow, yet in plain view of the foe, and the left extending off into a high ridge in front of a wood and near a field corn on our left. During the time of forming our line a terrible fire was poured into us from the foe in front, screened and concealed by a fence and thick brush. Before we were yet formed considerable numbers of each company had bit the dust and many more were groaning with ghastly wounds; and yet, notwithstanding all the discouragement which such a state of affairs was destined to produce, our men stood boldly up and poured a steady fire into the fence and wood from which the deadly missiles were falling around us, while scarce one single visible foe was seen before us; and to make our position more terrible and untenable a severe cross-fire was opened upon us from the corn field on our left and from a still hidden foe. Seeing it was suicide to stand the men were ordered to fall upon the ground, which they promptly did, and continued (a la Zouave) from that position to pour into the fields from which the balls were raining so thick upon us a prompt and steady fire. Numbers had already fallen in every company in the regiment. Several company officers had become victims. Captain Mullins, Company A, was wounded in the leg and taken back; Captain Lewis, Company H, killed; Captain Culbertson, Company K, mortally wounded; Lieutenant Washburn, Company F, killed. The horses of Colonel Warner, Lieutenant-Colonel Landram, and my own had been shot under us. The line of our troops which we were ordered up to support had fallen far back in our rear. Destruction seemed to await us, and yet every officer and man of the regiment stood up to his post, but it could not be supposed that men under their first fire could long be held to their position under such an array of terrible discouragements.

The right wing commenced falling back, the center and the left soon followed, nor could any effort of officers prevent a confused and precipitate retreat from a position which under all the circumstances we could not long have maintained without utter annihilation. In this retreat Lieutenant-Colonel Landram, while engaged in an effort to rally the men, received a painful wound in the face, and was sent by the surgeon to Richmond in an ambulance, where he was subsequently taken prisoner. Colonel Warner and myself mounted fresh horses and succeeded, with the assistance of Lieutenant Robbins, acting adjutant, and company officers, in collecting together about 300 of our men for the second conflict, in which we took position on the right, between the Twelfth Indiana on our right and the Ninety-fifth Ohio on our left, Company B, under command of Captain Johnson, having been sent out as skirmishers. During the first part of this engagement we stood silent spectators of a hard-contested combat on our left. Finally, however, by a flank movement, the enemy in overwhelming numbers passed around a corn field and made a precipitate rush upon our line in front, while they outflanked us in the woods and subjected the right of our line to another severe cross-fire, by which means they quickly turned our right, threw it in confusion, and produced another unavoidable retreat, in which Colonel Warner received a mortal wound through his chest, and Lieutenant Dunlap, commanding Company I, was shot in the head, producing instant death.

About this time Major-General Nelson appeared on the field and