L. P. Brockett, The camp, the battlefield, and the hospital: or, lights and shadows of the great rebellion

[248] before reviewed thirty thousand cavalry at Culpepper, according to the accounts of rebel officers), we beat them heavily, and would have routed them completely if Duffie's Brigade had come up. He, however, was engaged with two or three hundred men on the left; the aide-de-camp sent to him with orders was wounded and taken prisoner, and he is not the sort of man to find out the critical point in a fight of his own accord.

So now, they bringing up still more reserves, and a whole division of theirs coming on the field, we began to fall back. We had used them up so severely that they could not press us very close, except in the neighborhood of where the Second New York charged. There some of our men had as much as they could do to get out, and the battery had to leave three of its guns. We formed in the woods between a quarter and half a mile of the field, another regiment moved back to cover the left of Buford, who was in retreat toward Beverly Ford. Hart and Wynkoop tried hard to cover the guns that were lost, but they had too few men, and so had to leave them. The rebels were terribly punished. By their own confession they lost three times as many as we did. In our regiment almost every soldier must have settled his man. Sergeant Craig, of Company K, I believe, killed three. Slate, of the same company, also went above the average. But we lost terribly. Sixty enlisted. men of the First Jersey were killed, wounded, or missing. Colonel Wyndham was wounded, but kept his saddle; Lieutenant-Colonel Broderick and Major Shelmire were killed; Lieutenant Brooks was wounded; Captain Sawyer and Lieutenant Crocker were taken prisoners; and I, as you see, have had to come in at last and refit.