Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 24.djvu/261

 /{.it tt, n/ N,/;/,,/-'.X-  altei -wards ascertained that these attacks through the pine thicket had been made by a force of three regiments, half advancing at a time, and that their loss in the encounter was about 275 men. The disorder caused in their advance by the pine thicket was tin- only thing that rendered such a result possible. Hut without this combat, the whole division would have been assailed on its Hank and rear and inevitably destroyed.

"As it was. the division, thus guarded on its flank, repulsed two attacks, and finally, attacking in its turn, drove the enemy from the field, and killed and wounded, it was said on good authority, about 5, coo of his men, having itself only 2,250 engaged. But in the very moment of their success a courier came from General Ewell announc- ing that he had surrendered himself and his entire corps. So the division found itself in the same moment victors, yet prisoners of war.

" In this affair the loss of the Guards was very heavy amounting to thirty killed and twenty-two wounded of the eighty-five engaged, and every officer but one being either killed or wounded."

The killed were buried on the field by the enemy. The wounded were sent to the hospitals, and the unwounded to northern prisons. General McGlashan, in a lecture delivered at the Guards' Hall, December 5, 1894, gave a graphic description of the battle, in which he participated with his command, closely adjoining the Guards, and in full view of their line. General McGlashan's command fought an equally desperate fight, but with slightly better fortune than the Guards, as the losses were not so severe. In a letter from Major Basinger, read by General McGlashan in the course of his lecture, the former charged that the enemy fired on and slaughtered his wounded men after their surrender. Captain John R. Dillon, who was adjutant of the battalion, and was wounded at the battle, fur- nishes the following partial list of the killed:

Captain G. C. Rice; Lieutenants G. M. Turner, W. H. King, Fred. Tupper, Eugent Blois, W. D. Grant, G. W. Smith, Ser- geants George E. James, Charles Postell, R. Millen, W. C. Ben- nett; Privates A. O. Bowne, J. W. Myddleton, W. H. Rice, J. Mclntosh, B. Abbey, J. Rouse, E. L. Gordon, John Vickers, H. Crook, L. E. Barie, J. Gould.

The year following the bodies of eighteen of the Guards who fell at Sailor's creek were recovered and brought to Savannah. Only