In the execution of this order Companies I and G, with the color guard, continued marching straight ahead at the ordinary step, just as if no order had been given. The men of Co's F, C, D and B turned to their left and ran east--toward Sam Poffenberger's Co's H, A, K and E turned to the right and ran west--toward the Smoketown road. As fast as the respective companies "uncovered," they came to "Front" and advanced to the front, still running. In other words, after Co. B had run east and Co. E west, the length of their company, each man turned to the front (or the woods) and the company ran till B was left of G, and E was right of I, which being done B and E quit running and took up the ordinary step. It will be seen that D had twice as far to run to the east, and K twice as far to the west, and that C and A ran three times, and F and H four times as far as B and E had done. I have been so circumstantial in describing all this for two reasons. First, because standing to-day on the battle line of the 10th Maine (which is the position the enemy occupied at the time the 10th was deploying), and looking over the fence northeast into Sam Poffenberger's field, as the Confederates did, one will see how it was that when the 10th Me., with about 300[8] men, came to deploy and to advance afterward, the Smoketown fence, and the trees of Beal and Goss, with "the bushes," were an obstacle to the right companies, and the ledge would have been somewhat so to the left companies if Capt. Jordan had not halted his division[9] behind it. He did this for shelter as the first reason, and because, perceiving there was no Union force on our left, he knew it was better to have our left "refused" and hence not so easily "flanked" by the enemy. (See map.) Second, and more particularly, I wish to state that on Nov. 9, 1894, Major Wm. N. Robbins, 4th Alabama, Law's brigade, Hood's division of the Confederate army, met me by appointment on the field and compared experiences. We had previously had a long correspondence, in which he persistently referred to seeing a "hesitating" Union regiment which he ordered his troops to fire into. The result of this fire was the dispersion of the Union regiment, whereupon he himself went over towards his left and attended to affairs nearer the great cornfield. After a great deal of correspondence with every Union and Confederate regiment that fought in the vicinity, I could not learn of any Union regiment that was dispersed, either in Sam Poffenberger's field, or in the "field of stone piles," nor could the Major determine, by consulting the map alone, whether it was the Smoketown road or Joe Poffenberger's bypath that was on his left when the Union regiment dispersed. In November, '94, when we met on the ground, he was sure that the Smoketown road was on his left. Hence it was plain that it could be only the 10th Maine that "dispersed." Yet we certainly did not!!