Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Two).djvu/495

 regiments and front west. For the same purpose I hurried to the point where the plank-road and the turn-pike united. There I found General Schimmelfennig already at work. Our united efforts succeeded in changing the front of several regiments, and in forming something like a line facing the attack, but not without very great difficulty. Several pieces of the artillery of the first division, as well as some wagons and ambulances, came down the turn-pike at a full run, tearing lengthwise through the troops still deployed in line on the road. They were followed by the telescoped regiments of the first division in the utmost confusion. We had scarcely formed a regiment in line fronting west, when that rushing torrent broke through its ranks, throwing it into new disorder. Thus it could happen to General Devens to state in his report that, being carried by, wounded, he failed to see any second line behind which his dispersed troops might have rallied, while, after seeing him taken to the rear, we held that point twenty minutes. For, in spite of the terrible turmoil which almost completely wrecked two of my best veteran regiments, we did succeed, in the hurry, in forming a line, somewhat irregular and broken, to be sure, near the church-grove, consisting of the Sixty-first Ohio, One Hundred and Nineteenth New York, One Hundred and Fifty-seventh New York, and the Eighty-second Illinois, and, farther to the right, the Eighty-second Ohio, the Fifty-eighth New York, and the Twenty-sixth Wisconsin, the regiments I had placed front west earlier in the afternoon. Captain Dilger quickly moved his six guns a little distance back upon higher ground, where he could sweep the turn-pike and the plank-road. He poured shot and shell into the enemy's battalions as they advanced on the heels of the wrecked regiments of our first division. On they came, with fierce yells and a withering fire of musketry, widely overlapping our lines on