At the request of a Spared & Shared follower, Katherine Kilgore, I have transcribed her ancestor’s account of the 19 October 1864 Battle of Cedar Creek. His name was Benjamin Franklin (“Frank”) Cobb (1842-1918) and he served in Co. C (“the Chattahoochee Beauregards”), 10th Georgia Regiment. Frank wrote his account of the battle from memory in 1907 when he was 65 years old. Though the intervening years had turned his hair gray, the memories of that fateful October morning and the long day that followed, were as vivid to him in 1907 as the day he lived them.
Years ago the family made a transcript of Ben’s memoir available to the National Park Service and they published it on their public website, but it no longer appears there. More recently the family donated Frank’s original, handwritten account of his harrowing experience to the Stewart Bell Jr. Archives, Handley Regional Library and Winchester-Frederick County Historical Society. See New Acquisition Marks Battle of Cedar Creek. As yet, no public transcription of it has been posted by them to my knowledge.
Frank contends that on 18 October 1864, he was camped with his regiment on Fisher’s Hill near Cedar Creek Valley when orders were received to move out at “two o’clock the next morning and to leave off everything that would rattle or make a noise.” In the fight that later took place, Frank’s regiment used stealth and surprise to break through the defenses of the Union left (or eastern) flank, but he was shortly thereafter shot through the hips, immobilizing him on the field. A passing officer offered him a canteen filled with apple brandy which he sipped but did not drink, until he could be taken to a field hospital and treated. According to Frank, the operating surgeon did not think he would survive and so he was not transported with other casualties back up the Valley. Rather, he was left behind, with his canteen of apple brandy, alone in his thoughts, no doubt thinking of his loved ones at home—–well, I’ll let Frank tell you in his own words.
Transcription
My Last Battle
On the afternoon of October 18, 1864, my regiment, 10th Georgia, camped on Fisher’s Hill which borders Cedar Creek Valley, west of Strasburg, with orders to be ready to move out at two o’clock the next morning and to leave off everything that would rattle or make a noise. Sheridan’s army was strongly fortified on the hills east of the creek. About start time the next morning the regiment was formed and marched out leaving the little town of Strasburg to our left. Col. W[illis] C. Holt was in command. We did not go very far—probably one and a half miles—until we came to the creek. The Yankee pickets fired on us. We drove them off and waded over the creek and formed in line of battle on the west side with only our regiment in this column. 1 The order was furnished. We marched up a hill about one hundred yards with a battery shelling us from the time we struck their picket line at the creek but this did us very little damage until we got to the top of the hill. We were going due east and day was just breaking which gave us the advantage of what light there was. I could see the line of breastworks about fifty or sixty yards in front and the Yankees heads moving above them. I remarked to Lt. [J. C.] Herndon who was marching by my side saying, “Look out, we are going to catch it,” and just at that time the whole line opened fire on us from the breastworks which made a solid sheet of fire in our front. That really done us more damage than all the balance of the day’s fighting—killed and wounded scores of our boys.
But that was all the licks they got at us. [Then and] there we gave a Rebel yell and ran right in on them and scattered them like chaff before the wind. We captured their battery of six guns [and then] turned it on them, giving them grape canister, shot and shells as they went over the next ridge. They had tree-tops sharpened and set any [number of] limbs in from of their breastworks but I didn’t know it until I lodged in them. We formed across their line and moved up the line to another battery they had to the left of the Moore Pike Road leading down the Shenandoah Valley. Though we did not have more than half a skirmish line for the space as had to come, but we doubled them back and took the battery, making twelve guns we had taken, and routed the whole line completely—a half mile long—with one depleted line regiment. 2
But just before we got over the breastworks at the second battery, I was shot and so was Colonel [Willis Cox] Holt. An artillery officer shot us both with a Colt’s repeater just across the breastworks. Col. Holt was wounded in the knee. I was shot through the hips, wounding the withers and rectum. I was wounded about sunrise. It was cold that morning—a big frost—and I bled freely. And being wet from wading the creek, I got very cold. Lt. [John T.] Stovall was then adjutant of the regiment [and when he] noticed my condition, he gave me a canteen of apple brandy. Said he, “Drink it, it will stimulate you.” I took a drink or two but being wounded as I was, it burned me like fire or hot water, but I hung it on my neck.
They carried Col. Holt and I off the field in the same conveyance. He was complaining. Said his leg was hurting him badly. I told him if I was not wounded worse than he was, I would not care for it; I would get a furlough and go home. As he went off the field, Gen. [Jubal] Early was sitting on his horse at the bridge about two hundred yards in front of where we made the last charge and asked [me], “How is the fighting going?” I replied, “The Yankees are routed and are in full retreat.” He spurred his horse and went down the pike at full speed.
We got back to the field hospital 3 and they amputated Col. Holt’s leg. They carried him out by me and called my attention to it by saying, “Look here, I have a discharge.” They sent him to a private house and he died in a few days. He was a brave, kind, and noble soldier and officer. 4
Dr. J[ames] J. Knott 5 of Atlanta was our surgeon. He and a Dr. Carton operated on me. There was a small artery cut and they could not take it up. They just put a compress on it and got the blood stopped. We captured a rich battlefield that day and I think most of our boys went foraging. They certainly was needing all they got—except the whiskey. Rations were very scarce in that country [by] then, but our boys loaded up that day. In the evening, they began sending our wounded back up the Valley. Said our army was pulling back. After most of the wounded had been sent off, Dr. Knott came to me and said, I am going to make you as comfortable as I can, [but] you are not able to be moved. You will not live till morning. So they put me on a straw bed and stretched a tent fly over me. I did not raise any objections—didn’t think it was worthwhile. About night the last of them left.
After dark, an ambulance came by. I hailed it and asked the driver to take me on.
“I can’t,” he said. “I have all I can carry.”
I said, “I have a canteen of brandy. If you will take me on, I will give you all you can drink all night.”
Said he, “Get in!”
“I cannot move so you will have to put me in.”
So he got out and put me in and took my canteen and brandy. They hauled me about forty or fifty miles up the Valley to Harrisonburg but it was all the same with me. I took a fever and did not know anything for several days. My wound has never healed. I am hardly able to walk now though it has been almost forty-three years ago. I am still here yet.
1 General Kershaw’s men, including the 10th Georgia, crossed Cedar Creek at Bowman’s Mill Ford, some 200 yards from an old grist mill by that name. There was a heavy fog that morning, the temperature was in the 40s, and the water in the creek would have been waist high.
2 Simm’s Brigade (including the 10th Georgia) from Kershaw’s Division had just 520 men and yet with stealth and speed, they managed to overrun Col. Joseph Thoburn’s command who had had available to them strong breastworks made of timbers and earth on a bluff overlooking Cedar Creek. Most of Thoburn’s men never had time to get from their tents to the entrenchments before they were overrun. One Confederate who witnessed these scene wrote of it, “Such a sight as met our eyes as we mounted their works was not often seen. For a mile or more…towards the rear was a vast plain…Tents whitened the field from one end to the other…while the country behind was one living sea of men and horses—all fleeing for safety. Men, shoeless and hatless, went flying like made to the rear…Such confusion, such a panic, was never witnessed before by the troops…” Three of the four batteries under Thoburn’s command were captured which were then turned on Emory’s Corps.
3 There’s a strong possibility that Frank was taken to the big brick farmhouse of Daniel Stickley on the western side of Cedar Creek where a field hospital was established and amputations were performed. When Gen. Phil Sheridan launched his counterattack that turned a Confederate victory into a disastrous defeat, the retreating Confederate forces steamed past the farm and Confederate surgeons abandoned the soldiers who could not be moved and lit their medical wagons on fire. [See—Artifact Spotlight: How a Kitchen Table Reveals the Horrors of War]
4 A newspaper article appearing in The Concord Times (Concord, North Carolina), dated 24 November 1898, states that John Samuel Hoshour of Woodstock, Virginia, claimed that Col. Holt died at his mother’s home. Hoshour was only 16 years old at the time but remembered Holt to be a gentleman and a Christian for he became quite attached to him before he died. He was buried at the home—his grave marked with a wooden headboard. [See “Man believes Col. Willis Cox Holt died in his home.”]
5 Surgeon James Jerrold Knott of the 53rd Georgia is reported to have been the youngest surgeon in the Confederate army, having graduated from the Medical College in Atlanta in 1859 at the age of 20. He was from Griffin, Spalding county, Georgia, but later resided in Atlanta.
Want to Read More?
Battle of Cedar Creek: From Triumph to Catastrophe, by Ralph Peters
The Battle of Cedar Creek, by Joseph W. A. Whitehorne
Spared & Shared 22 