|
Colonel Joshua Chamberlain, commanding the 20th Maine Infantry: “The artillery fire on our position had meanwhile been constant and heavy, but my formation was scarcely complete when the artillery was replaced by a vigorous infantry assault upon the center of our brigade to my right, but it very soon involved the right of my regiment and gradually extended along my entire front. The action was very sharp and at close quarters.” -- Chamberlain’s battle report, in War of the Rebellion: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, series I, volume 27, part 1, page 623
Colonel William C. Oates, commanding the 15th Alabama: “I saw no enemy until within forty or fifty steps of an irregular ledge of rocks--a splendid line of natural breastworks running about parallel with the front of the Forty-seventh [Alabama] and my four left companies, and then sloping back in front of my center and right at an angle of about thirty-five or forty degrees. Vincent’s Brigade...reached this position ten minutes before my arrival, and they piled a few rocks from boulder to boulder, making the zigzag line more complete, and were concealed behind it ready to receive us. From behind this ledge, unexpectedly to us, because concealed, they poured into us the most destructive fire I ever saw...I could see through the smoke men of the Twentieth Maine in front of my right wing running from tree to tree back westward toward the main body....” -- Oates’ memoirs The War between the Union and the Confederacy, page 214
|
