till afternoon. At about 1.30 p.m. I came back to our lines to endeavor to obtain water and ammunition for the men, and also to try to get a gun silenced that was enfilading us from the battery on the left. I did this by permission of Brigadier-General Hartranft, who was near me. Before I could return the last charge was made and nearly all our forces came back. It was sometime before I learned that any part of my command was still in the rebel fort, but I learned at about 3 p.m. that our colors were still flying on their works, defended by about thirty of the men of my command; of these about ten made their escape and the remainder were taken, among them all that remained of the color guard, of whom only two remained uninjured. So far as I can learn the colors of the Twentieth and Second Michigan were the last displayed on the reel fort. After the withdrawal of our forces I assembled the remains of my command and was assigned to a position in the trenches adjacent to the Eighteenth Corps, where we remained till the 1st of August.

I append a list of casualties.*

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

BYRON M. CUTCHEON,

Lieutenant-Colonel, Commanding Twentieth Michigan Infantry.

Captain THOMAS MATHEWS,

Actg. Asst. Adjt. General, 2nd Brigadier, 3rd Div., 9th Army Corps.

No. 208. Reports of Captain Alphons Serviere, Forty-sixth New York Infantry.

HDQRS. FORTY-SIXTH Regiment NEW YORK VET. VOLS.,
Rifle-pits before Petersburg, August 5, 1864.

SIR: In the following I have the honor to report the part my command took in the engagement of July 30, 1864:

My command was moved from a position in the rear, where it had arrived the evening previous, to the newly made trenches about 3.30 o'clock on the morning of July 30, 1864. Awaiting the explosion of the mine, we were shortly afterward moved to the triangular space behind the breast-works formerly occupied by the Twenty-seventh Regiment Michigan Volunteers, where the men were ordered to lie down. During our stay on this place we had 4 men wounded. About 9 a.m. my command was ordered, with the brigade, into the rifle-pits to the left from our last position, and shortly afterward we were ordered to climb over the breast-works and to make a charge upon a fort which the enemy occupied, a short distance on the right of the road. As soon as I saw the command to do the same. The regiment to our right, after having passed the breast-works, moved very rapidly right-oblique, and owing thereto my regiment lost its connection with the same, which before my command could get over the breast-works had already far advanced. My command charged about 100 yards forward in the face of a galling musketry fire from the enemy's works, when, seeing the impossibility of taking the fort, my right wing, as mentioned before, being disconnected,

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*Embodied in table, p.247.

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