Thursday, June 23d.
At 5 A. M. the regiment was ordered to report to General Gibbon for assignment to a position on his line. On reaching that line I found that the position to be occupied by my company was a very exposed one, being an angle the interior of which was commanded by the opposing rebel lines, and especially by sharpshooters, but by going through a narrow ravine in single file we succeeded in getting into the breastworks with the loss of but one man, Private Sinnot, who was shot through the heart and killed instantly. We found these works little more than a mere rifle-pit pushed out in front of the main line, and we at once went to work to strengthen it. Having accomplished all that we could, the men stretched their shelter tents on poles above them for protection from the sun, and laid down in the ditch or on the bank beside it. I sat with my back against the logs just at the angle, and for some time two sharpshooters, one on each side, amused themselves trying to hit me. Each could from his position look right into the rear of our breastworks, one seeing the logs to the right and the other those to the left of me, but neither
could quite reach my corner. Just as I was beginning to think that my position was the safest on the line, I heard that peculiar “spat” which a bullet makes when it strikes a man or a green tree, and saw that a shot had cut off the stick which a moment before had supported the shelter tent of Corporal Polley, who was lying on the bank near my feet, and on pulling the canvas off of him I saw that the ball had entered his head at the left cheek bone, passed under the skin over the temple, and then out about an inch and a half from where it entered. He was unconscious for a few moments only, and as soon as he revived I directed two men to take him to the rear. Earlier in the day Polley had had the sole of one of his shoes cut by a rifle ball, and had jokingly asked if that wound didn’t entitle him to go to the hospital, and on my replying that I did not think he could march very comfortably in that shoe, he said: “Oh, well! I guess I’ll give the `Johnnies’ another chance.”
In the afternoon we were ordered out of this nasty position, and were sent to build more substantial breastworks farther back and in rear of a piece of woods, where, after throwing up enough of a rifle-pit to protect us, we spent the night. When we withdrew from the advanced position the rebels came in and occupied the line, and one of my men named Blair, who did not know that the company had left during his temporary absence, returned just as the “Johnnies” came swarming over the angle, one of whom raised his rifle and called on the “damned Yankee” to surrender. It required but an instant for Blair to take in the whole situation, and employing a mode of expression quite as complimentary and picturesque as that of his Southern brother, from which it was fairly inferable that he declined the invitation, he dodged a bullet aimed at his head and plunging into the brush, soon joined his comrades.
