Baptism of Fire, The Battle of Perryville, Ky (The Civil War Diaries S1E06)

[Music] do [Music] so after five brothers had gone to war being the youngest and but 15 years old i was plowing in the field one day when some of the neighbor boys who had enlisted came along where i was at work they had their new uniforms and guns and they laughed at me because i could not go i was a big overgrown boy and weighed 168 pounds and that night i ran away with the neighbor boy to cincinnati 200 miles up the ohio river i enlisted and when the mustering officer asked me how old i was i said i was a man and was 15 years old they said they could not take me without the consent of my parents as i was going around the camp charlie olmstead later captain of company a 42nd indiana came along asking every young man to put his name down to start a new regiment he said the 25th was going away soon and we could all stay there after a few days i went home and told my mother to pack up my duds because i was a soldier we started on that long and dusty march for louisville with nothing but flour to eat not even salt now talk about living on flour alone a housewife cannot make anything out of flour except paste with which to hang paper on the wall or maybe put into a little cheese cloth bag and dust onto her cheeks for powder but laugh if he will there's more truth than poetry about this the way we did was to dump a barrel of flour off the wagon and knock the top in and one man at a time would dump in a quart of water and mix it up into a little dough and we would wrap that dough around a long stick and hold it in the fire and it would be burned black then we would get a flat stone and flatten the dough out and lay it onto the stone placing the stone in front of the fire to bake when the stone would get hot enough it would burst we called the finished hardtack sinkers think of an army of thousands of men marching through kentucky and living on flour alone i'm not positive but i think there were 50 000 men we had a little salt peter that was procured out of old pork barrels at nashville where meat had been packed and this salt peter was in hard lumps we thought that by pounding it up fine we could use it as salt but it gave us a water brash and we slobbered like cows after eating clover after arriving in louisville we drew three days rations and started for perryville kentucky it was about 42 miles and we marched on the double quick nearly all of the way we expected to fight and it heard that the johnnies would take all of our grub away from us if they captured us according to this prognostication i ate my two pounds of pickled pork raw and chewed up the coffee which i had from fear of it being taken from me water was very scarce and the salt meat took effect with a vengeance while still four miles from the scene of the battle we could hear the candidating in the front what with this and the dry weather and the salt pour we were sorely in fear and distress we finally reached a creek near the widow bottoms house but found that the creek was dry except for a few puddles of water with green scum over it in our desperate need we skimmed the water and put it into a pot and boiled it making ourselves some coffee while we were doing this the irish brigader louisiana tigers came down on us out of the woods colonel jones called to fall back and saying get up to his horse over the stone fence he went our baptism had begun we fell back on our brigade 300 yards where they lay in the cornfield and we had two sergeants jack jones and math mathematics the farmer had told us what to do if we heard a cannon shot he said don't dodge as when you hear it it will be passed well he was running ahead of me and every time a cannonball or shell would go over he would duck straight to the ground both of these men had been in service in the mexican war and we young fellows looked at them for information and had been doing so but after that we would not take their word anymore we formed behind a fence and as well as any soldiers could this was in the edge of the timber dick nash the man of company a was laying in the corner of the fence dick was known as a fellow that could out swear any of the soldiers and flanders well the rest of us were hugging the ground the bullets were coming in thick and fast and i saw dick get up on his knees and offer up a prayer as fine as a minister could do the johnnies were coming in right over towards us and they came up to the fence where we were and before we were relieved our whole regiment gave them a volley that stopped them until the other three regiments which were in our brigade could get there these were the 10th ohio third ohio and 15th kentucky and they got a back of us and fought hard but about half of them were left there killed or wounded or captured and we had to retreat shooting all the time other troops came up and we fell back on a hill but it was so smoky that we could not see far so we were ordered to charge down captain olmstead of company a raised his sword and called come on boys and turn to go down the hill he met his death at that moment for a bullet pierced his brain my partner and i were six feet two and one half inches tall and were the two first in the regiment the bullet that killed captain olmstead went between us captain olmsted's brains blinded us as he fell directly before us and we jumped over him with the determination to avenge his slaughter about halfway down the hill two johnnies were sitting behind a rail cut log with their guns cocked and ready and one of them shot from my head his bullet passing right below my ear clipping the hair and the other drew blood from lockwood my file leader as soon as they shot they squatted close to the log and threw up their old gray hats and said we will surrender well i don't know just how it was but others said they saw two guns come down on those two johnny's heads and i found my gun broken and do not know how it happened the whole thing was over in 30 seconds or less colonel denby had gotten shot in the mouth and his lips were bleeding and he was mad he was riding along the line shouting to cease firing but by this time i had picked up another gun and had a load in it smoke battle opened up and we could see the ribs and i fired right in front of the colonel's horse horse jumped back and colonel didn't be struck at me for shooting i was looking for another cartridge so sergeant mccutchen later captain of company a threw his gun over my head and caught the blow of the sword the sword was not very sharp but nevertheless it cut into the barrel of the gun behind the front side of it cleaned the bore now if the colonel sword had hit me i would probably have not gotten hit again in a few minutes colonel wanted us to get out of there for about a hundred yards distant with five lines of rebs coming in me then said right face forward by foul right double quick and as we were going up the hill i had not had a chance to see the ribs yet there being a tree about 12 inches through the butt and forked six feet from the ground i jumped behind it no sooner had i looked about than a musket ball struck me on the leather cat brim blistering my forehead in my fried i thought my brains were laid bare because of the stinging pain and the blood pouring down into my eyes and as i followed the regiment i was afraid to put my hand up there for fear to disturb my brain i had to slow up here because of the shock of the wound on my forehead and by now the regiment had gotten away from me i was coming to a branch running down a hollow filled with blackberry bushes and i dived into them as they were large and dense well i surely thought they had more thorns in them than i had ever seen and they held me so that i was stuck and could get no further either forward or back i put my big gun crosswise in front and low down and with it worked myself back and out of there and then walked around the bushes and got into the woods there i found 14 of the regiment with the colors but not one officer with them it wasn't long though before they started to come in and they kept coming until we had 150. two divisions of us had been fighting all of bragg's army and just over the hill not a mile away were 22 000 troops that were not in on the fight and when a courier reported the buell he said they got in now let them out all the army knew that general bragg of the confederates and general buell were brothers-in-law and had supper together the evening before and that general buell had promised general bragg that he would let him get back south without a battle so that night they left our front peter truckee of evansville and i went back onto the field in the moonlight and we found our captain captain olmstead slain in our sight that day next morning five of us went to where his body was to bury it but we could not be sure for the rebels had stolen all of his clothing except his shoes and under clothing we hunted up the others of our dead and the captain's body was sent home to be laid among his family as we neared the town of perryville we saw the dead bodies of 400 confederates piled up four feet high and 50 feet long with a fence built around them to keep the hogs from devouring them this terrible first experience we never did forget and we were always after that looking for a chance for revenge we left there after we had found a large spring which they had held until the next day the 9th of october 1862 just one year from the time we were mustered in to do or die for the preservation of the union [Music] if you'd like to learn more about private george kirkpatrick or the 42nd regiment of indiana infantry the links to all of the reference material are in the video description below if you enjoyed today's video and would like to see more content like this be sure to like subscribe and ring the notification bell to stay up to date with all the latest bird dog videos

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Id: icDWSdDVFrk

Length: 11min 52sec (712 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 07 2020