Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 4.djvu/97

Rh separated from its brigade and was called upon to support another brigade. Always ready for a fight. Colonel McElroy did his part with skill and courage, and the regiment suffered a loss of about 200 men. No better example of the hotness of the fire to which these regiments were exposed can be found than in the losses of one of the companies. Captain Flowers, of the Thirty-eighth regiment, lost 27 men out of 32 taken into action.

Lieutenant Cathey, of the Sixteenth regiment, describes the situation of the soldiers the night of the battle. He says: &quot;Our surroundings were deserts of solitary horror. The owls, night-hawks and foxes had fled in dismay; not even a snake or a frog could be heard to plunge into the lagoons which, crimsoned with the blood of men, lay motionless in our front. Nothing could be heard in the blackness of that night but the ghastly moans of the wounded and dying." On retiring from Beaver Dam creek General Porter, having, as he says, 30,000 men, fortified in a naturally strong position on the east bank of Po white creek, six miles from Beaver Dam. Crowning every available prominence with batteries to sweep the roads, and also posting batteries or sections of batteries between his brigades, he, with Sykes division of regulars, Morell s and McCall’s divisions, and later with Slocum’s division sent to rein force him, awaited the attack of the divisions of Jackson, A. P. Hill, Longstreet, Whiting and D. H. Hill. The battle that followed the meeting of these forces, known as Games Mill, or Cold Harbor, was one of the hottest of the war.

As at Mechanicsville, A. P. Hill was the first to send his troops into action, almost in the center of the field. As a part of his force went nine North Carolina regiments the Seventh, Eighteenth, Twenty-eighth, Thirty- —