The Bloody Fifth by John F. Schmutz

Author:John F. Schmutz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY / United States / Civil War Period (1850-1877)
ISBN: 9781611212051
Publisher: Savas Beatie
Published: 2016-07-18T16:00:00+00:00

Col. John Cunningham Upton Texas Heritage Museum

Soon the fancy 5th New York could take no more, and as one of its members later put it, “what was left of the regiment broke and ran for their lives—the Rebels after us, yelling like fiends.” It now became hopeless butchery. In panic the Zouaves threw down their guns, and in small, disjointed groups, broke for Young’s Branch, down the slope some 200-300 yards in the rear.103

As the enemy fled down the hill toward Young’s Branch, the 5th Texas continued to slaughter them from the crest of the ridge. Robertson wrote in his report that “[v]ery few, if any, of that regiment reached the hill beyond.” Private Matthews of Company K remarked that “it seemed that every fellow was making for the crossing on the branch.” And with their red trousers and blue jackets they made good targets. Sergeant Alfred Davenport of the 5th New York reported observing “men dropping on all sides, haversacks cut off, [and] rifles knocked to pieces. I was expecting to get hit every second, but on, on I went, the balls hissing by my head.” It was “no exaggeration to say that hillside was strewn thick with the flower of those two regiments.” An observer later proclaimed that it was possible to walk on the corpses from the edge of the woods to the creek, “so thickly were they strewn.” Only deepest hell could compare with that experience, one veteran of the 5th New York said. “Not only were men wounded, or killed, but they were riddled.”104

As the Zouaves continued fleeing down the hillside, Sidney Virgil Patrick and another soldier from Company E, 5th Texas, chased some of them across the stream and up the far slope. This is where a bullet found First Sgt. Virginius Pettey. The shot went through his bowels and he would die from his agonizing wound on September 2. “His last injunction was to tell his friends that he died in a good cause and that he was perfectly willing to die for he had served his country faithfully,” his friend and messmate later wrote the family. Ironically, Pettey had written home just two weeks previously warning his loved ones not to speculate too much on his good fortune in battle so far.105

The Zouaves hastily plunged across the water, and their large, baggy pantaloons filled with water until “their legs look like balloons.” Patrick and his companion fired several shots “through the baggy britches of the smaller of the two Zouaves who lagged far behind his longer-legged comrade.” According to Patrick’s accomplice, “the little New Yorker ‘was not crippled, however, for he went up the hill like a rabbit, and at every jump water squirted (from holes in his pants) like one of those garden fountain hoses.’” Patrick’s companion, “who admitted that he ‘was too scared to see the fun of it,’ observed that Patrick ‘was laughing fit to kill himself.’” This episode left such an impression that although he participated in fierce

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