Captain J.W. Slater Interesting War Experiences
Narrow Escape #28
Ironton Register 26 May 1887
Submitted by Peggy Wells
“Your time has come, Captain J.W. Slater, for a “Narrow Escape,” said we to the affable drug man at Norton & Co., “the Register desires a bit of your experience in the late unpleasantness, when, just at the moment, you would rather have been home than in the field of war.”
“Well, I had a few of those trials and tribulations, and one comes to mind now, it may not seem like a very “Narrow Escape, but it made a powerful impression on my mind. I can’t picture it just as it made me feel at the time, for I thought it was a fond adieu for me, but I thought the country was on its last pegs.”
“All right, go on with the story.”
“You want me to tell it then? It was at the Battle of Stone River, the first day’s fight, on the 30 December – a cold day in one sense, but a hot one for us. I belonged to the 18th Ohio and was in General Negley’s division, occupying the right center. General Rosecrans commanded our army and Bragg the rebs.
“Along in the afternoon, the rebs massed on our right, and just at that time, our artillery and cavalry horses had been taken back to a little creek for water. General Stewart, who commanded the reb left, attacked our right.
They came in big force and with an enthusiasm that could not be withstood. They got clear around in our right and turned it at the start, so the entire wing began swinging back like a door. It didn’t seem like a circumstance to the rebel left. They swept down on us, gathering artillery, capturing whole regiments, and having things their own way.
“When they got our line almost at right angles with the original line of battle and proceeded to double up on us and fold us upon ourselves, there was a bugle call to retreat. I was a bugler then, and I took up the call and sounded a retreat, but the boys did not seem to hear it. At least at the time, the boys had made a little stand on the edge of the woods, and the reb line seemed less demonstrative because it was swinging back with the many who had heard the call.
The men who didn’t were soon in the hands of the rebs, for the reb left joust doubled up and raked our men in by the thousand. Thousands of brave men were killed or taken prisoner there because…[do not have the rest]
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