May 5 — We were on the march all last night, moving in the direction of the Wilderness. I was so sleepy this morning just before day that I dozed and came very near falling off my horse. To-day about eleven o’clock we sighted the first new goods of the season in the way of live bluecoats; near the Wilderness we encountered a force of the enemy consisting of cavalry and artillery. They opened fire with their artillery and fired on our cavalry at first sight and right away, without wasting any time or opportunity, and were trying to do some ugly work from the start. We put two of our rifled guns in position and replied to their battery, but they had decidedly the advantage of us, both in position and the number of guns. We had only two guns engaged and the Yanks had eight, yet, as unequal as the first fierce conflict was, they did not budge us from our position with our two pieces. After fighting about an hour they ceased firing and we put in the last word and remained on the field an hour after the firing ceased; then we moved our battery to their left and flanked their position, thereby causing them to retire their guns and wholly abandon their first position. Undoubtedly the Yankee batteries did the best and most accurate firing to-day that I have seen or been around since the war; their shrapnel shot exploded all around and over us, and the everlasting ping and thud of slugs, balls, and fragments of shell filled the air with horrid screams for an hour, and the death-dealing mixture tore and raked up the sod all around us like a raging storm of iron hail. We had three men wounded, two horses killed, and several disabled.
From the way the shell howled closely around me today, if the Yanks keep on handing them around with the same familiarity and accuracy that they did this afternoon I am afraid that they will harvest me before I will be ripe, and gather me in before the season is over and the campaign ended.
The field that we were in was covered with dry broom-sedge about two feet high, and the cowardly Yanks, although they had the best position and eight pieces to our two, attempted to drive us from the field by setting the dry broom-sedge on fire by shooting some kind of a something of the firework family at us, which, from its appearance as it came flying slowly and emitting a thick volume of inky black smoke, and blazing with glaring red fire, looked like a little bunch of hell. It ignited the grass, which burnt rapidly all over the field and right around, and even under our guns, but we stuck to our position and kept up our fire on the Yankee battery.
Late this evening we had a spirited little fight on the banks of the Po, a sluggish little stream and one of the headwaters of the Mattapony; at first we repulsed the enemy and drove them across the Po and back on their infantry. Then and there they made a bold stand and successfully resisted our assault and further advance. We recrossed the little rivulet then and camped for the night. The whole country between here and the Rapidan seems to be full of Yankees, and I expect that there will be some hot work in the fighting business tomorrow. To-day’s operations transpired in the northwestern part of Spottsylvania County just in the edge of the Wilderness. We did our fighting to-day under the supervision of General Rosser and in conjunction with his brigade of cavalry. Our cavalry fought well and stubbornly this afternoon.
