behind AotW

I’ve been transcribing and posting some post-battle reports to AotW this week; most were written by Federal medical officers and I’ll write about them later, once complete, but today, thanks to a timely lookup in the Supplement to the OR by Dr Tom Clemens, I’ve added a report from Colonel William Gibson, 48th Georgia Infantry, speaking for Wright’s Brigade, who were at the extreme right of the line in the Sunken Road at Sharpsburg on 17 September and later withdrew to the Piper Farm.

If you think that is a run-on sentence, how about this from Colonel Gibson’s Report:

Yet, seeing the weakness of the brigade and the strength of the enemy, the brigade then numbering under 200 with every field officer, the General and one of his aids wounded and lying on the field, I contented myself with holding our advanced position. The support on our right and left having been withdrawn, and none being in the rear that I knew of, with our cartridges exhausted, upon seeing a new formation of the enemy in our front, of a very large size, and a movement by our right flank, from which a brigade had long since retired, I withdrew the brigade, in order, to a stone fence in the rear, which position was held during the day, by several charges being made on the enemy when appeared in force on our front, and a gun which was lying in the road, seemingly abandoned, which Lieutenant Chamberlain, of the Sixth Virginia Regiment, fired with great accuracy into the advancing columns of the enemy three different times and drove them back.

We’re up to 337 Official Reports on AotW now. If you seek a little light reading you can find them all listed in the OR Index.