The Rev. Lieut. Strickler, of Co. E, and Capt. French, both consistent members of the Methodist Church, were standing together conversing on the subject of religion when a party of the enemy’s sharpshooters came near enough to add their rifle bullets to the terrible storm of shell that rained around, and during the hottest of it the Lieutenant was heard to remark that whatever was foreordained by the Almighty would be accomplished, and if we were intended to be killed there we couldn’t help it, while, on the other hand, if our time had not yet been fulfilled according to God’s predestined plan, we were safe, although a thousand cannon should open their thunder upon us; and in this comfortable doctrine (under the circumstances) the Captain readily acquiesced, greatly to the gratification of Colonel White, who in religious opinion was an Old School Baptist.
About 2 o’clock the firing ceased, and the war-storm lulled to silence, allowing the soldiers a breathing spell and time to inquire for those who were missing from the ranks, and many of the brave boys who had gone gallantly into the battle that morning never came back again, for their names were dropped from the Company rolls to be recorded in the list of heroes who gave their lives for the “Lost Cause,” but who made it a glorious one by its bloody baptism.
Henry Moore, one of Company A’s best and bravest, and who had been with it from the beginning, had fallen in the front of the fight, shot through the brain. Joseph Hendon, a gallant young soldier, also of Company A, and a native of North Carolina, was killed in the first charge. Samuel W. Crumbaker, Company A, was mortally wounded, and Lieut. Benjamin F. Conrad, who deserved the title of “bravest of the brave,” if any man ever did, was terribly wounded in the thigh, (in the first charge, when Co. A was running over “everything she came to,”) which made amputation necessary, and he was never able to do duty again. Color-Sergeant Thos. N. Torreyson, Company C, also lost a leg, and John Douglass and Hugh S. Thompson, Co. C, were killed, as was also Jacob W. Huffman, of Co. E, and quite a large number wounded, whose names, as far as ascertained, will be found at the close of the volume.