On May 4, 1864, the head of Grant's army met Lee's forces on one of the few roads of the Wilderness, known as the Orange Plank Road. The battle was joined. At first the Union forces drove the Confederates back into the thick woods. There they were reinforced and the knowledge of the field began to tell. Everywhere Confederate soldiers were sent by short cuts to attack the entangled Union forces and before long the Union line was shattered and driven back only to form again and fight once more for six long days. And what a battle that was! As in the fierce forest-fight between David and Absalom the wood devoured more people that day than the sword devoured. The men fought at close quarters and in the tangled thickets of stunted Virginia pine and scrub-oak they could scarcely see ten yards ahead. Every thicket was alive with men and flashed with musketry while the roar and rattle of guns on all sides frightened the deer and rabbits and wildcats that before that day had been the only dwellers in those masses of underbrush. The men fought blindly and desperately in both armies. Artillery could not be used to much advantage in the brush. It was largely a battle of musket and bayonet and wild hand-to-hand fights in the tangle of trees. The second day the Confederate lines were rolled back to the spot where Lee himself stood. Just as they were breaking, down the plank road at a steady trot came a double column of splendid troops paying no attention to the rabble and rout around them. Straight to the front they moved. It was the brigade of Longstreet, Lee's great "left hand." At once the Union advance was stopped and the Confederates began to reform their lines. At this moment from the pines streamed another Federal brigade with apparently resistless force down upon the still confused line. Then it was that a little force of Texans did a brave deed. They saw that if the Union advance was not checked, their men would not have time to form. Although only eight hundred strong, they never hesitated, but with a wild Rebel yell and without any supports or reinforcements, charged directly into the flank of the marching Union column of many times their number. There was a crash, and a tumult of shouts and yells which settled down into a steady roar of musketry. In less than ten minutes half of the devoted band lay dead or wounded. But they had broken the force of the Federal advance and had given the Confederate line time to rally. Back and forth, day after day the human tide ebbed and flowed until the lonely Wilderness was crowded with men, echoing with the roar and rattle of guns and stained red with brave blood. At times in the confusion scattered troops fired upon their own men, and Longstreet was wounded by such an accident.