Page:Memoirs of Henry Villard, volume 2.djvu/163

 wounded. General Hood, however, had his hip shattered by a bullet, and was supposed to be mortally wounded, but recovered with the loss of a leg. Bushrod Johnson assumed command in his place. Our eight overwhelmed brigades — one of T. J. Wood's, two of Van Cleve's, two of Davis's, and three of Sheridan's, almost the equivalent of two divisions were not only swept off the field, but carried in such a direction and to such a distance as to withdraw them entirely from the struggle. They were forced both off the Lafayette and Chattanooga road which formed the means of communication between them and our left, and out of the valley of the Chickamauga into the valley of the Chattanooga, so that Missionary Ridge became a barrier between them and the remainder of the army. Buell's, Van Cleve's, and Davis's men got all mixed up, and made off in confused swarms. Sheridan, after being pushed back, re-formed his brigades on a ridge overlooking the scene of his fight; but, when he ascertained that all our troops to his left had disappeared, and that the enemy was between him and General Thomas, he determined to make an attempt to recover connection with the latter by marching his command on the arc of a circle over the hills of the so-called Dry Valley road, and by it to the Crawfish Springs road, and thence over Missionary Ridge to our lines. He was obliged to disencumber himself of twenty-four guns and forty-six caissons which he had found abandoned by other organizations and scattered promiscuously over the ground.

Colonel Wilder, with his brigade of mounted infantry, which had been guarding our right flank while moving to the left in the wake of Sheridan, struck the extreme left of the column assailing the latter, and succeeded in checking and driving it back, capturing two guns. He remained on the ground, and had another successful encounter with the enemy in the course of the afternoon. He took position on the outrunners of Missionary Ridge and held it till 4 P.M., although he was repeatedly advised by superior
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