Page:Journal history of the Twenty-ninth Ohio veteran volunteers, 1861-1865.djvu/71

 division, commanded by John W. Geary, occupied about the left center in the order of battle.

During the evening of May 1st the Confederate army were charging the right of our lines, and for four hours the artillery firing on both sides was terrific. It continued at intervals the entire night. The air was ablaze and full of deadly missiles dealing destruction all around us; the earth trembled under our feet; the rattle and roar of artillery was like continued bursts of thunder. The heavens seemed on fire, revealing the deadly strife of two grand armies locked in close embrace, fighting with desperate valor. The dense smoke was lightened by rapid flashes of artillery, the bursting of shell, and the unceasing discharges of musketry, making a scene grand and terrible in the extreme. At midnight this deadly combat ceased, the death-like stillness which succeeded being broken only by the cries of the wounded and the dying comrades so recently beside us in deadly combat. About 1 o'clock at night pickets were posted forty yards from the main line. We were so near the rebel pickets we could hear every movement. Here we lay flat on the ground watching for demonstrations of the enemy until the dawning of another day of blood and death. In the first flush of early morning the rebels advanced with columns en masse and at once opened fire on us. This we returned and then quickly retired under a storm of leaden hail. Leaping over the rifle-pits we soon rejoined the command.

The Twenty-ninth regiment now moved in a south-*westerly direction along the line of works a short distance, in support of a New York regiment. While supporting this regiment the Twenty-ninth was under artillery fire from the right flank. Colonel Clark was struck by a shell, and rendered unconscious nearly two hours. The