Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 2.djvu/398

296 was accomplished by this expedition which cost our army many valuable lives. The regiment returned to New Orleans late in December and went into camp at Madisonville near the north shore of Lake Ponchartrain. Here was found a healthful location and strengthened by recruits and the return of many from the hospitals early in March the regiment went to Brashier on the way to join General Bank’s Red River expedition. Marching up Bayou Teche, through Opelousas and Washington to Alexandria, it united with General A. J. Smith’s command. The army left Alexandria late in March and began a slow movement toward Shreveport. When the enemy was encountered near Mansfield, our regiment was many miles in the rear. With other troops it hurried to reënforce those engaged and was soon in battle line. When the advance of our army was checked and soon after overwhelmed by superior numbers in a crushing defeat, Colonel Connell was severely wounded and captured and the regiment lost eighty officers and men, killed, wounded and prisoners. The next day at the Battle of Pleasant Hill, where several of the Iowa regiments in the brigades of Colonels Shaw and Hill made a most heroic stand and saved the army from destruction, the Twenty-fourth and Twenty-eighth were not engaged, as they had been sent toward Grand Ecore to guard the trains, General Banks having begun his retreat on the day previous. Notwithstanding the repulse of the Confederate attacks on our army at Pleasant Hill, our wounded were left on the field and the retreat was continued to Grand Ecore. Lieutenant-Colonel Wilson and Major Meyer were absent at this time securing recruits and after the capture of Colonel Connell the command of the regiment devolved upon Captain Thomas Diller of Company G. The army halted some time at Grand Ecore, where Lieutenant-Colonel Wilson joined his regiment with a number of recruits. In June it was at Carrollton, where Colonel Connell, who had