About ten o’clock in the morning we were ordered to march. We knew not where, but which soon proved itself to be a battle. We passed thru a little thicket of black jack scrubs into an old field planted with care, directly in the rear of Mr. Howlett’s house. Around the house the skirmishers and the Yankees were hotly engaged and we marched up to support them within forty yards of the house, directly in front of us was our extreme line of fortifications, and about a quarter mile distance we saw the Yankee line. These were to be taken by us. The Minié balls began to fall thick and fast around us, and we drew up to the line of breastworks. It soon became known along the line that we were to charge the Yankees in our front, and many a heart quivered and fluttered with excitement, and an instinct in dread of the coming task. But the firm resolution to do or die beamed upon every countenance. We were anxious for the work to forward, for we felt that the sooner it was over the better we would feel. At last our gallant Colonel McMaster gave the word, “Steady, Forward, Charge” and over our works we leaped, yelling like demons, charging forward at the double quick. Not a man faltered, tho many fell, and on we rushed ’til we reached the enemy’s works, form which we drove them by main force. They ingloriously fled and we poured a parting load into their flying and scattered ranks. Some of our men leaped the breastworks and followed the retreating foe to some distance, but were ordered back. We now quietly lay down behind the works awaiting the enemy’s attempt to regain it. They rallied forward and with a shout rushed on toward us, but alas, they were met with a rain of Miniés from our fellows and fell back, confused and scattered. Again they tried, and met a similar reception. Again, the third time, they formed a splendid line and came forward in good order, but the old 17th was awake, and farely poured in their balls on their ranks. They wavered, broke, and fled in dismay. Once more they made a feeble attempt to drive us away, but to no purpose, and they finally concluded that discretion was the better part of valor, and gave up their fruitless attempts, but such a rain of shells and balls as they poured on our fellows we have never seen since the Second Battle of Manassas. We were ordered to go to work with our bayonets and throw up breastworks, which we did, but fortunately we got some spades and shovels left by the Yankees, and for a while shovel and spade were plied vigorously as our rifles a few minutes before, and a stout breastworks was soon in front of us. A steady fire was kept up between us until night spread her sable curtain over the field of dead. Our front was thickly bespotted with dead Yankees, but our own loss was comparatively trifling. In our company, we lost Private Will Martin, killed, Lieutenant W.S. Moore, wounded in thigh, Robert Randall, shoulder, I.W.Y Dixon, ditto, slight. Our success along the whole line was complete and old Butler was cooped still closer under his gunboats. The Yankee loss was estimated at from three to four thousand. Ours about one thousand. So ended the victory of May 20th, May 21st. Last night the enemy under cover of darkness, threw up, or dug, some rifle pits about three hundred yards away, and our boys and them have been picking at each other all day, occasionally killing or wounding one. The Yankees shelled us today heavily, but to no purpose. The sun is awful hot, we have no shade. We get some haversacks canteens, etc. from the battlefield.
