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"History of Eau Claire County Wisconsin, 1914, Past and Present"

Chapter 11 - Eau Claire County in the Civil War

by W. W. Bartlett

Part 10

(-as transcribed from pages 152 - 161)

I have asked J. F. Ellis, who helped Captain Hall to recruit this company and who served as a private in same, to tell your readers its story.

J. F. ELLIS' STORY.

Eau Claire, Wis., August 14, 1911 -- W. W. Bartlett:  As I promised, I give you the following history of Company K. Fifth Wisconsin Infantry, which was mostly made up here.  My diary, which I kept, was burned in the great Water street fire years ago, so my account is largely a matter of memory, which accounts for a general lack of dates.  There were three Companies K in the Fifth Wisconsin; First Company K, Evans, captain, from Menomonie; Second Company K, Mott, captain, also from Menomonie; and Third Company K, Hall, captain, designated from Eau Claire.  The last one is the company I write about.

A GRUESOME CAMPGROUND

    The seven new companies of the regiment were sent from Washington via Harper's Ferry to Winchester, where we joined the balance of the regiment and went into camp on the battlefield.  It was a desolate sight.  Every living thing was destroyed.  Not even a weed could be seen.  The ground was gouged and pounded.  A fitting place for new recruits to camp.  Shallow trenches had been dug, the dead laid in and covered with earth rounded up a little.  Here and there a shallow place had been scooped out and a body twisted and stiffened in its contortions, so that it could not be laid in the trenches with its fellows, was placed in the shallow grave and covered.  Rains had come and washed off some of the covering and here an arm and there a foot was pointing mutely toward the heavens.  The stench was sickening.  One of our boys saw a shoe almost new lying on the field.  It looked to him to be about his fit.  He thought he had made a good find.  He rushed to it and picked it up.  He found that it had a human foot in it, which had began to decay.  There was no other place for our camp and there we camped for a few days.  We formed in groups of fours, buttoned our pieces of tents together, making our tent large enough for four men to sleep in and huddle under during a storm and a shelter for our extra clothing and provisions.  Each group of four owned a coffee pot and spider and usually cooked its coffee in common, while each man cooked his own meat.  We had fresh beef and salt pork regularly and our rations were abundant and generally good.  From Winchester we moved up the valley to Red Cedar Creek, where we became a part of the army under Sheridan, near the battle-ground where the battle of Cedar Creek was fought.  Here we became a part of the Sixth Corps of the Army of the Potomac, Wright commanding, and remained in that corps until the close of the war.  The Fifth Wisconsin was not in that battle, although it had been a member of the Sixth Corps from the time of its organization.  While at Cedar Creek I became indisposed and was sent to the field hospital, which was located in a beautiful placed in large tents.   My care was very good there, and I was soon able to walk. The presidential election was coming on and I happened to be the only one in the company who had any experience in conducting an election, so the captain wanted me to come back to the company and take charge.  The surgeon-in-chief advised against it, but did not forbid it.  I took my belongings and went back to the company the day before the election and sat at the polls in the open air at the head of the company camp and polled votes all day.  That night when I turned in, after making up the returns, I was about played out again.

The morning after the election, before I had a chance to return to the hospital, the army was ordered to fall back, the hospital well in front.  I was hardly able to march without any load, so with my gun, accoutrements and outfit, I struggled.  The army made a half day's march and it was night when I got in.  I got some help in carrying my load by a wagon carrying supplies.  The army, as the retreat began, was so severely harassed by guerillas and rebel cavalry that it went into camp here and sent out strong picket lines.  We stayed here until after Thanksgiving Day.  The day and night before Thanksgiving snow began to fall and on that day the ground was covered and the weather was severe.  The people in New England had sent down a shipload of turkeys, geese, ducks and chickens for a Thanksgiving dinner for the Army of the Potomac.  A lot of "fixings" that go with them was sent too.  The part that came to the army in the valley reached it the night before.  The advantage of holding commissions was well shown in the distribution.  Every group of four enlisted men got one chicken.  Every officer a pair of chickens, a turkey or a goose or duck and fixings.

Sharp and deadly work was being done on the picket line.  Strong picket posts behind rail and timber barricades composed of the best shots were shooting every enemy in range and many of them in turn were hit and brought in.  Although I was not detailed on picket duty, I went out to see them work.  Our camp was in the timber.  There was no cooking or serving meals by companies or in groups.  Each enlisted man usually received five days' rations, consisting of hardtack, a piece of side salt pork, coffee, C sugar, salt and paper.  Also generally fresh beef.  The cattle were driven with the army and when in camp enough were slaughtered for one to two days' rations and distributed.  We were transferred by rail back to Washington to our old quarters in the shadow of the capitol, and soon marched across the long brigade again to Alexandria, thence by transport down the Chesapeake Bay and up the James river to City Point.  At this place, which was then General Grant's headquarters, a train of flat cars was ready for us, on which we took passage for the left.  This road was known as "Grant's Railroad," and extended from City Point, behind the lines as far to the left as the army reached, and was used to transport supplies and men back and forth.  The road was level and graded but little.  At places where the hostile lines were close to each other, a high bank was raised along the track on the side towards the enemy for protection.  As we were whisked past these places the engineer pulled the lever wide open and we went by at a clip that made it very difficult for us to retain our footing.  Each car was loaded to its capacity with standing men, holding on to each other. The noise of the rushing train provoked a storm of shot and shell, but all passed over us or fell behind us.  The sharp rattle of musketry and the heavy roar and smoke and flash of artillery all along our right as we speeded along the track showed that the fighting was on all the time.  We landed at General Meade's headquarters, some distance to the left of Petersburg, and moved out to the breastworks occupied by the Fifth, or Warren's Corps, and relieved it.  Our pickets were detailed and sent out to the front, relieving their pickets and Warren's Corps fell back to the rear of Meade's headquarters and became a part of the reserve.  The Second Corps, that we relieved, had built their winter quarters, which we occupied.

When we relieved the Fifth Corps in the long line investing Petersburg, the Union forces were opposed by the line of the enemy extending as far to the left as ours reached.  Each line was protected by breastworks in which at every commanding or high point a fort stood, mounting from one to more pieces of artillery, and the field in front of the breastworks were generally cleared of timber.  The breastworks were protected by abattis, rows of tree tops striped of bark and sharpened tops lying with butts set in ground, tops pointing out.  The ditches in front of the works were deep and at this time of year, early winter, were mostly filled with yellow, muddy water.  The picket posts were rail barricades, the more exposed with earth thrown up against them in front.  They were about sixteen feet front with a wing at each end and from twenty-five to one hundred yards apart; each post manned with from five to twenty men.  The picket lines were fighting all the time when we relieved Warren's Corps.  Every man exposed on either side was shot at by some one or several men on the other side.  Casualties were numerous.  When we went in there we followed the old custom of the Sixth Corps not to try to kill an opponent unless necessary for the protection of our own lives.  We had no personal feeling to gratify by wantonly killing.  So after repeatedly firing at our picket posts, at a cap poked up in sight on a ramrod, a blouse with a hat above poked into view and getting nothing but chaffing in return, shooting at each other mostly ceased.  Instead something like this took place:  "Hello, Yank."  "Hello, Johnnie."  "Got any coffee to spare, Yank?"  "Got any tobac, Johnnie?"  "Leave me some coffee at the foot of that tree and I'll leave some tobac."  And so the trading habit was put in force.  The men from each going to the stump or tree sometimes got together and talked over their lots.  Soon deserters began to come, sometimes one and later in squads.  After a while they came so thick that the enemy attacked us several times, drove in our picket line, and drove us back to the breastworks, where the alarm of the attack had called up the entire army with reserves.  We had several of these attacks during the winter, but none of them proved to be very serious.  They were made to induce us to shoot deserters who made a run for our lines.  They resulted in our capture of some of the attacking men, and as we could not shoot the one or half dozen men running to our lines, the desertions became more numerous.  The practice of shooting at every one in sight by the troops, both to our left and right, continued as before we relieved Warren's men.  The desertions to our corps were greater than those to the entire balance of the line.  Desertion by them was a serious matter.  Trusted men were stationed all along their line, good shots, with instruction to shoot every man leaving their line coming toward ours without a flag of truce and escort.  Many tried it and were shot dead and the report of the effort and death circulated among the men of the rebel army.

During the winter an execution for desertion in front of the enemy while in battle took place in front of our regiment, outside the breastworks.  Two men had been condemned to be shot.  Their graves were dug in the field in our front.  The men were brought through the lines in ambulance open wagon, sitting on their coffins; each man's legs were tied together at the ankles and knees and hands tied together behind their back.  Each man's coffin was placed across his grave and he was seated on the foot.  His eyes were bandaged; ten men of the provost guard, with loaded muskets, faced the condemned men.  The officer in charge took his station by one of the men and instructed the guard that when the word fire was given, they must fire at the man aimed at, aiming at his breast.  He gave the command: "Guard ready, aim, one, two, three, fire." Before he gave the command "fire," he jerked the man next to him off the box and the shots were at the other fellow.  He fell backward off his coffin with his bound legs still on the coffin, lying on his back, face to the sky, dead, his breast stove in.  This was the only execution by court martial in the Sixth Corps while I was a member of it.  Major General Humphrey, who executed so many men in the Nineteenth Corps, was reputed to be a brave commander, very rigid and austere.  I had a personal taste of his austerity and promptly put his bravery to test, and it was wanting.  I was stationed with a squad of men at the picket post on our extreme left.  The next one to the left was the Nineteenth Corps post on the extreme right.  In the picket posts along our front we had not been required to turn out the guard, form in line and present arms to the general officer of the day of the army, though the rules of war required it, and it was all a soldier's liberty was worth not to do it.

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