E. P. Roe: Reminiscences of his LifeRoe, Mary A. (Mary Abigail)
History
E. P. Roe: Reminiscences of his Life
Roe, Mary A. (Mary Abigail)
Roe, Edward Payson, 1838-1888
was the Harris Light Cavalry, made many a gallant stand, but what
could a few men do against twenty times their number? With many it
became a sad race for life and liberty. But before dusk we had the
satisfaction of effectually checking the enemy. For the first time
in my life I found myself rallying a body of men in a fight.
Officers and men coming in rapidly, we soon had a respectable line
formed and the enemy's advance was now decidedly checked. Captain
Elder, who had brought off all his guns in safety, planted them on
an eminence, and soon they were thundering defiance to the baffled
enemy. Shell after shell screamed over our heads and exploded. Soon
after a part of the First Corps came up, formed a line of battle,
and relieved our thinned and wearied ranks. We retired to the
friendly shelter of a neighbouring forest, and that deep sleep
which follows great excitement and exertion quietly stretched us
out as motionless and unconscious seemingly as the lifeless forms
of our brave comrades that lay cold and stark along the line of our
bloody retreat."
"Many changes and much marching and counter-marching have taken
place since the soldiers of the Harris Light Cavalry gathered
nightly under the old apple tree, or in front of the chaplain's
tent, during the warm moonlight evenings of September and October.
The rich autumn foliage that then made even poor old desolated
Virginia look beautiful has dropped away, and stern winter,
rendered all the more grim and forbidding by the ravages of war,
now reigns supreme. Many of our number, also, like the leaves, have
dropped away. Some, having obtained and squandered their bounty,
have treacherously deserted and sneaked away like thievish hounds.
The bullet, accident, and sickness have each conspired to lessen
our number, and many a noble-hearted fellow who was always first
and foremost in all a soldier's duty is now languishing in some
hospital, or sleeping beneath the sod that last sleep from which no
bugle call shall waken him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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