The rebels soon found a gap at the right of my Regt. and began to pour in past our right flank. I was lying on the ground loading and firing fast as possible when I saw the rebels charging past our right, with their arms at a trail, looking up I discovered that there was not a man to the right of me in the Regt. I did not wait for orders but struck out for the rear in a squad of one. I could not see a man of my regiment so I concluded to help support the battery, accordingly I rushed up nearly in front of one of the guns just as they gave the Johnies twenty pounds of canister. That surprised me. I found I was in the wrong place, twenty pounds of canister fired through me was liable to lay me up, so I filed left and came in front of the other gun just as the men were ready to fire. They called out to me to hurry as they wanted to fire, facing the gun and leaning over to the right I called to them to fire away and they did fire away with a vengeance. After this things seem mixed up in my mind. I remember getting to the rear of that gun, of hearing the bullets whistling, of seeing the woods full of rebs, of thinking I shall get hit yet, of trying to find a good place to hide and finally of stumbling and falling, striking my breast on my canteen, and then oblivion.
How long I remained unconscious I never knew, probably not long, but when I came to my understanding the firing had ceased in my immediate vicinity except now and then a scattering shot. I started again for the rear and had not gone more than a quarter of a mile before I found Gen. Baird urging a lot of stragglers to rally and protect a flag which he was holding. Here I found Capt. W. A. Collins and several other men of my Company. When he saw me he asked me if I was hurt. I told him “no, not much, I had a couple of cannons fired in my face and fell on my canteen which had knocked the breath out of me but that I would be all right in a little while.” He then told me I had better go to the rear to the hospital. To this I objected, telling him that I had rather stay with the “boys.”
We then marched to the rear and halted in a corn field. The stragglers from the regiment began to come in and the brigade was soon together again, but we did no more fighting that day. But just before night we were marched to the front and formed in line of battle. About 8 o’clock in the evening Johnson’s Division attempted to relieve another division in our front, Wood’s, I think it was, when the latter division poured a galling fire into the former, supposing they were rebels. Some of the balls came through the ranks of the 10th, whereupon Company K opened fire without orders and a sad mistake it proved for it revealed our position and a rebel battery opened on us with shells. To say that they made it lively for us is to say but part of the truth. The woods were fairly ablaze with bursting shells. The way they hissed and shrieked and howled and crashed was trying to the nerves of a timid man.