Was I frightened? Hold your head down so that I can whisper in your ear and I will admit in strict confidence that I was never so scared in all my life. But I felt somewhat as one of our boys expressed it when he said: “By the great horn spoons, they’ll never know I’m afraid if I can help it.” While we were lying there one of the old Pennsylvania Buck Tail regiments of the Fifth Corps passed over us to do some skirmish work. There were several of these regiments and they were famous fighters. The men all wore a buck’s tail on their caps. Late in the afternoon our regiment took part in a charge and had to go over a rail fence. Our colonel tried to have his horse jump the fence but he would not do it until one of the men took a couple of rails off the top, and then he went over. Down in a ravine he got stopped again with a vine that caught him across the breast. Col. Whistler swore like a trooper and put the spurs to him, but the vine was too strong and men had to trample it to the ground. Col. Whistler elevated himself several degrees in the estimation of his men that day by going into the battle mounted. He had been a martinet when in camp, and was of a peppery disposition. But his conduct at Spottsylvania commanded the respect of all. “I tell you,” said one of the boys, “Jeremiah N. G. Whistler is an old fighting cock.” “He can’t forget his tactics, though,” said another. “Do you mind that when we got up to make that dash through the ravine we did not get the command ‘forward’ until he had dressed us to the right.” The fighting continued until well into the night and when the report of the last gun died out the troops laid down on their arms until morning. The surgeons and their helpers worked all night removing the wounded. We carried them out of the woods in blankets. In the rear of our division there were three amputating tables with deep trenches dug at the foot. In the morning those trenches were full of amputated limbs, hands and fingers, and the piles above the ground were as high as the tables. The confederate forces withdrew from our front in the night, leaving their dead on the field, which were buried by our men as they laid away their comrades. The clash of arms in which we had had a part was no small affair. Probably more than 40,000 men on each side had taken part in the battle, but the country was so uneven and densely wooded that a participant saw but little of what was going on outside of his own regiment. In fact in almost every engagement the rank and file knew but little of the operations away from their immediate vicinity. At our informal dress parade that night an order from Gen. Meade was read, complimenting the heavy artillery regiments for their soldierly conduct the previous day, and saying he would thereafter rely upon them as upon the tried veterans of the Second and Fifth Corps with whom we had fought our first great battle.