Diary And Memoranda, 1864
May 19th. (At home) The 1st Mass. H. A. in action. Co. B lost more than any company in the Regiment [53 killed and wounded]. George Bricket was killed.
[Up to this time, besides his duty as private in the ranks, he had also been serving as company clerk. He was at home on a veteran’s furlough in May, 1864, when the regiment was ordered to join the advance of the whole army under Grant, and he was obliged to read in the papers of the terrible loss it sustained in the battle of the Wilderness on May 19th, where, in the afternoon, while repulsing Ewell’s corps, the regiment lost in one short hour 898 men. His own Company, B, lost in killed and wounded over half of their entire number. In this battle his cousin George Wellington Brickett, of Company B, was instantly killed in the first charge made on the enemy, and another cousin, Asa Frye, was wounded. Fortunately, his brother, also a member of the company, but acting at the time as regimental bugler, escaped uninjured.
With these terrible facts before him, it required a great deal of courage to leave home to join the regiment, knowing that a severe campaign was before them. He rejoined the regiment during the last day of the battle of Cold Harbor, and was first under fire with the regiment, fighting as infantry, at the first assault on Petersburg by the Second Army Corps, to which the regiment was attached, on the evening of June 16, when the regiment again lost heavily. Leverett received a bullet through his shirt-sleeve which lodged in his coat, which was rolled on his back. The coat had some eight different holes in it, and was a wonderment to all those who saw it the next day, when it was exhibited.—Ed.]
