638 Nortnu Carorina Troops, 1861-65.

I regret to be obliged to state that under these circumstances,
heightened by assaults and fire of the enemy, some of the men
had been without meat for three days and all were suffering
from reduced rations and scant clothing, exposed to battle,
cold, hail and sleet. I have directed Colonel Cole, Chief
Commissary, who reports that he has not a pound of meat at
his disposal, to visit Richmond and see if nothing can be
done. If some change is not made and the Commissary De-
partment reorganized, I apprehend dire results. The physi-
cal strength of the men, if their courage survives, must fail
under this treatment. Our cavalry has to be dispersed for
want of forage. Fitz. Lee’s and Lomax’s Divisions are scat-
tered because supplies cannot be transported where their ser-
vices are required. I had to bring W. H. F. Lee’s Division
forty miles Sunday night to get him in position. * * *
“With great respect, your obedient servant,
“R. E. Les,

“General.”

The Sixty-third North Carolina Regiment was on that
march of “forty miles” that cold “Sunday night,” which was
5 February, 1865.

CHAMBERLAIN RUN.

This was the most fearful and fiercest battle we were ever
in. In order to intelligently understand it, other regiments
must be referred to, of course. And so it has been all through
these writings of mine about the regiment. I could not
tell “the whole truth” without, often, mentioning other regi-
ments, men and matters. No one regrets more than I do this
expansion of my imperfect picture of the Sixty-third. But it
would not do to paint one regiment alone, however great, in
front of Sheridan’s Corps and call it a battle; others must be
there, or the one becomes ridiculous. Such a situation of the
Sixty-third would also have been awfully unfortunate for it.
And, therefore, I pray pardon for what seems irrelevant to
this history.

As to the part of the Ninth in the morning fight, Colonel
Cheek has so well told what it did that I simply refer to pages

Srxty-Tuirp Regiment. 639

72 and 473 of Vol. 1 of these histories. The word “after-
noon” near the top of page 473 should read “forenoon.”
That is self evident from these two pages as a whole. Now
why was ‘“‘Colonel McNeill repulsed at the ford,” in the morn-
ing, and what part did Colonel McNeill and his grand regi-
ment do in that awful tragedy where he died ?

At the same time that Colonel Cheek received his orders
for the action, Colonel Gaines, of the Nineteenth, and Colonel
MeNeill received theirs, I heard them given and so did Frank
Brown, now living. Colonel Cheek executed his magnifi-
cently and so did Gaines and McNeill, as far as it was possi-
ble for mortal men to execute them. The Sixty-third was in
front. A small detail from the Sixty-third was sent, mounted,
to our right as videttes, under Captain S. A. Grier. Me-
Neill and Gaines were told “to dismount their regiments, go
to the ford, cross in column of fours, the Sixty-third to deploy
in line of battle to the right of and below the ford; the Nine-
teenth to follow and deploy fast in line of battle to the left
and above the ford, completing and connecting the line be-
tween Cheek and MeNeill and drive the enemy.” Those
were the orders.

The road crossed that ford at right angles. The water
there, “one hundred and fifty yards” below Cheek, was much
above “the men’s waists,” its depth, according to Colonel
Cheek, where he was. Of course it was much deeper with
us than where the Ninth was, even if it was the ford. So
deep, so “impassable by reason of briars and swamp under-
growth” and a bluff to the immediate right of the ford, and
on our side of it, and other obstructions of fallen timber on
both sides of the stream, that it could not be crossed, for bat-
tle, except at the ford. It would swim a horse twenty feet
below the ford. Men were shot down in the ford, swept off
by the current and actually drowned before their comrades
could pull them out. That was the sort of a place the Sixty-
third and Nineteenth had to cross under their orders.

Across the stream, from the road up to Cheek’s right, was
a body of small and large timber extending forward almost
to the enemy’s entrenchments; immediately to the right of the
road was open ground, sparsely wooded, thirty-five or fifty