General Beauregard, next in command, succeeded Johnston, and the battle opened again at daylight the next morning. During the night the enemy had been strongly re-inforced, and our men were steadily pressed back.
John Cathey, John R. Loftin, Waddell and I were among the wounded. We were sent to the field hospital several miles back in the wood. When the Surgeon General went to work on me he gave me a glass of whiskey, saying it would help me bear the pain. I told him I would not drink it. He then handed me a dose of morphine. I refused that. He looked me squarely in the face, saying, “Are you a damned fool?”
Our men, fighting stubbornly all the while, were pushed back by superior force through and beyond the Yankee camps we had captured so easily the day before, and at last retreated to Corinth, amidst a terrible storm of rain and sleet. We had lost about ten thousand men. That was the beginning of our real soldiering and the greatest battle we had been in. About thirty thousand men were killed, wounded and captured in those two days, the loss on each side being fifteen thousand.
At Corinth we awaited re-inforcements and prepared to renew the struggle. The Yankee forces advanced to Farmington, and we had a little more fighting. They captured one of our outposts, then we drove them back to their lines. Colonel Fellows was always on the front line. At this battle he plunged after some cavalry, following them he struck low, boggy ground. He got stuck in the mud and lost his hat, but succeeded in capturing the enemy.
We kept heavy guards at night. One night eighteen of our company were put on out-post, but our cavalry was still further out. George Thomas and I were stationed inside a fence row. We were told not to fire, and we were to be relieved before daybreak. We were not relieved however, and when day came we found ourselves only a short distance from the Yankee breastworks. We could have kept concealed by the grass and bushes, but George, who knew not the meaning of fear, stood in his corner of the fence-row. As he watched the Yankees walking their beats on the breastworks he thought it a good opportunity, and before I knew it, he had shot his man. Oh, then three cannon and two thousand infantry turned loose on us! The fence was knocked to smithereens. The rails, filled with bullets, crashed over us. Limbs falling from trees, covered us, and we were buried beneath the debris like ground hogs. We could not get out until darkness fell again. Then we found some of our cavalry, and tried to get back to our regiment, but the Yanks were between us and our command. The cavalry said we could fight our way through their lines, and we did. The cavalry soon left us behind. Yankees were shooting all around us and yelling for us to surrender, but we ran into a ravine, where we were hidden by the thick undergrowth, and so we got away.