April 17 — This morning, an hour before day, the same old alarm that has waked us so often in the last month was brought into requisition and sounded in our ears again, “Get up! The Yankees are coming. Pack up and get ready to stand to your guns.” This thing of being rear guard of an army and operating on the immediate front of the enemy is a service both active and arduous, full of alarms, hardships, and excitement.
Before daylight we were out on the pike in position, and before sunrise we saw the Yankee skirmish line coming through the fields on our left and their cavalry advancing up the pike at the same time in our immediate front. When the cavalry arrived in the street of Hawkinstown, which was about half a mile from our position, we opened on them with our howitzer, and soon scattered and checked them, but the infantry skirmishers on our left still advanced slowly. We fired on them until they disappeared from sight by filing into a ravine.
The whole Yankee army was advancing, and when they brought their artillery to the front to fire on us, we left and fell back to Rude’s Hill, two miles south of Mount Jackson. At the south end of Mount Jackson where the Valley pike crosses Mill Creek our men burnt the bridge, but its destruction offered very little resistance to the progress of the enemy’s advance, as the creek is small and there is a very good ford just below the bridge. Consequently, we knew that destroying the bridge would present no serious obstacle to the advancing cavalry, but we thought that it would at least for a while check the column of infantry; but it did not in the least, for I saw the leading regiment of the infantry column march down the hill to the ford in quick time and dashed into the creek and through it without the least hesitation or faltering.
They seemed to be familiar with the situation, and acted with a boldness heretofore unshown and wholly unequaled. The creek was no more hindrance to the onward march of their footmen than it would have been to a herd of cattle. We were on a hill about half a mile from the creek when they crossed, and their infantry was close up with the cavalry, and advancing so determinedly and rapidly that meant business all over, that we did not deem it judicious nor very wholesome to go in position just there and then before a column of cavalry and infantry, backed with batteries of Parrott guns. At the southern base of the hill we were on the turnpike crosses the north fork of the Shenandoah. The bridge was already prepared for destruction. The proper quick inflammable material was all in place ready for the igniting match, but the enemy pressed us so vigorously and dashed so boldly over the bridge that they captured the man who set it on fire, and extinguished the kindling flames. When the Yanks rushed impetuously across the bridge like wild men, flushed by the success of its passage, with drawn sabers and firing as they came, our cavalry was rather surprised by the sudden appearance of the enemy in their midst,— as it was a foregone conclusion that the bridge would be destroyed,— consequently our men were incautiously not looking for the unexpected irruption that was so momentously thrust upon them so unceremoniously.
As soon as the front of the column had crossed the bridge the fight commenced in earnest, with saber, pistol, and carbine. Our men stubbornly resisted the advancing foe with saber and pistol, and at one time were mixed up with the Yankee cavalry, fighting hilt to hilt.
One Yankee cavalryman rode boldly toward Colonel Ashby with the deliberation of a desperado, pistol leveled ready to fire; but just as he was in the act of firing Captain Koontz saw him and, surmising his intentions, quickly drew his pistol on him and fired, unhorsing him just in time to save Ashby.
In the meantime the Yankee cavalry were still coming across the bridge, overwhelming our men in number, who at last succumbed and fled from the field. We were in position with our howitzer on the pike nearly half a mile from the bridge, but did not fire, as our men were mixed up with the Yanks.
When our cavalry began to break away we doublequicked for Rude’s Hill, which was a mile away, just about as fast as our horses could travel in an extraordinary emergency. The Yankees were then charging us. When Colonel Ashby galloped past us on his bleeding horse, he called, ” Good-by, boys; they will get you this time.” I think his remarks were partly intended as an effective incentive to make us run faster, which we surely did. I ran one mile just a little faster than I ever hoofed it before. The Yanks gained on me at first, and I could hear their clattering arms close behind me.
But when Ashby passed us and said, “Good-by, boys,” it gave me such an impulse and incitement for running that it really seemed to increase my speed without extra exertion. As we drew near Rude’s Hill, which was to us the goal of freedom, the Yanks gave up the chase and we were safe. The Yankee cavalry then retired to the north side of the river, and nothing in the shape of an enemy remained on our side of the river except a few scattering footmen sharpshooters, with long-range rifles, creeping along the fences in derailed chipmunk style, trying to conquer the Southern Confederacy by shooting now and then at a daring careless Rebel.
Just as we reached Rude’s Hill the Yankees opened a battery of rifled guns on us, which they hurriedly placed in position on the hill a little below the bridge on the north side of the river. When we reached the top of Rude’s Hill we put our Blakely gun in position and fired a few shots at their battery, but the distance was too great for anything except noise and wasting ammunition.
While I was sitting on the ground watching a Yankee battery firing, I heard and saw a shell coming, and from its course and trajectory I knew that it was searching for me, so I moved away as quickly as a man can when a shell is after him. When I got away about eight feet from where I had been sitting a tenpound Parrott shell struck the ground at the very spot that I so hurriedly vacated a moment before, but fortunately the shell did not explode, and laid there still and harmless.
It is wonderful and almost inexplicable how a man can slip between and slide around danger unscathed. If I had not seen that shell coming it would have shattered the clod that anchors me to earth without giving me time to say farewell to the Southern Confederacy.
This afternoon the Yanks put a battery of Parrott guns in position about a mile above the bridge on the highlands that bound the bottoms on the west, and about a mile and a half from our position. When they opened on us with that battery we replied with a few rounds, then left Rude’s Hill and fell back to Sparta, about eleven miles from Rude’s Hill, where we arrived a few hours after nightfall. Weary and nearly exhausted, we laid ourselves away for the night.
The man who so undauntedly approached Colonel Ashby to-day with leveled pistol and was shot by Captain Koontz just in time to save Ashby, bore such a striking resemblance to the Yankee deserter, spy, New Orleans sugar merchant, that it is now admitted and believed that he was the very man that was permitted to ride all through our camps a few days ago without proper surveillance, a dangerous spy, locating camps, bridges, and roads, out-talking and out-lying all creation.
But alas! Mr. Spy, if our deductions are correct your deception and boldness were quickly followed by disastrous consequences, that never fail to settle the spying business, and requires its gathered victims to give an account of their stewardship at the bar of the “Kingdom Coming,” where Rebels cease from troubling and sugar merchants desert and spy no more.
