Dear Subscribers to the Greenup and Lewis Counties, Kentucky Mailing Lists, This is Posting Number Five from ~Under the Flag of the Nation: Diaries and Letters of a Yankee Volunteer in the Civil War~. The passage quoted today is on pages 46 and 47 and is the second half of the description of the Battle of Chickasaw Bayou, Mississippi. "De Courcey's brigade was next, but the boys pressed forward so vigorously in the daring onset that it was difficult to tell who was in the advance. Onward we swept through flame and smoke and blood, leaving the dead and dying behind us, climbing, crawling, fighting our way up the slope with the desperation of men resolved to conquer or die. Our thinned ranks, breathless, bleeding, reached the center of the enemy's works. Here, we were assailed by an awful fire from outnumbering foes nearly surrounding us. Bravely we had won our position, but it was found impossible to hold it. One third of our attacking party was placed "hors de combat". We had taken both first and second lines of the rebel entrenchments, and yet we found but defeat in victory. Such a destructive storm of shot and shell was poured in upon us that we were compelled precipitously to retire. With saddened hearts, we yielded to the cruel necessity. Such was the battle of Chickasaw Bluffs. It was a brave but desperate conflict [This was the first and worst defeat the Forty-second Regiment, OVI, ever suffered.]. We accomplished all that mortal valor could achieve. Those frowning heights could not be carried by charging them in face of all their batteries with but half the army commissioned for the enterprise. We now withdrew to a point out of range of the Rebel field artillery, though their heavier guns shelled our position incessantly. At sunset, under a flag of truce, the two armies gathered their dead and wounded. This is the saddest duty devolving upon a soldier. The shrieks of the wounded, the groans of the dying, appeal to the sympathies of the most hardened nature, and our hearts grow heavy as we bury side by side our late comrades in arms. Glorious though the day may have been, this sad rite dispels every feeling of joy, when we remember how many mothers are made childless, how many children left without fathers, by the slaughter of the battlefield. Our loss was 580 killed, 1400 wounded and 550 missing [The Brigade, composed of the Sixteenth and Forty-second OVI and Twenty-second Kentucky Regiments, lost 1300 men.]. (I am a little confused on these figures.) The loss of the enemy could not be ascertained, though it could not have been as heavy as ours, as they fought under cover of their entrenchments." Sincerely, Randal W. Cooper P.S. My third-great grandfather William Cooper of Company "E", Twenty-second Kentucky, was wounded in this battle, taking a Rebel mini-ball in the forehead, an inch above his right eye. He was transferred to the Invalid Corps and was never able to return to full duty. My "Family Lore" adds that Private Cooper refused to allow anyone to operate on him. Thus, the bullet remained lodged in his body for the remainder of his long life. William Cooper died November 23, 1903.