Ironton Register 19 Jan. 1888 – J.O. Bingham was a member of the Ohio 1st of D and after when veteranized of Company A. He was in the service 4 years and 7 months, which was about as long as a fellow could get in. Col. Kinney first commanded the regiment, and afterward, the noted Col. Raynor.
The Register scribe scouted Mr. Bingham as he was sailing up Center St. one day last week and asked him to fish up a ‘Narrow Escape’ from his long experience in the army.
“Well,” said J. O. Bingham, “about the most interesting experience I had in the war took place during Banks’ ill-fated Red River Expedition. I had just veteranized, and was promised a good furlough home when the expedition started, and as they ordered our regiment on the expedition. Of course, all the vets went, they didn’t like to go home just as things were getting romantic, so they joined in and kept themselves happy by thinking of the furlough they’d get when they returned.
“I’ll not tell of the Banks’ demonstration – you can read that in the history, only speak of our return from Alexandra on the Red River to New Orleans. Our regiment, 300 of us, started on the transport, John Warner, down the river. Banks’ was falling back, and we were only preceding him. There were with us, also, two little musket [?] gunboats. The rebs were thick all along the river.
“When we got down to Snaggy Point and were going around a bend, a masked Battery opened on us and swept our boat badly – tore off the pilot house, severed pipes, mashed wheels, in fact, completely disabled us, so that we were swinging with the current.
The rebs were on the right side of the river. They kept the fire hot on us with artillery and muskets. Col. Raynor ordered a man to swim with a rope to the left shore, and the man succeeded in doing it. This brought our boat to the opposite side of the rebels.
“While we were thus swinging around, a shell crashed through our boat, and went under the floor, taking off the soles of one man’s shoes, and the feet of the next man to him. The former was Thomas Cox and the latter Sergeant Woods of Gallipolis. Woods fell into the hands of the rebs and died a week after. When the shell exploded it wounded Jas O’Dell and Ezra Arthur, and as I was standing right next to them but got off with a mere scratch.
“Our company got behind some cotton bales on the right side of the boat, and so, when Col. Raynor ordered the men from the craft, we didn’t hear the order, and he got the rest of the regiment up the bank and in the woods before he missed us. Then he came back for us and while getting us off, was himself badly wounded in the leg, so in addition to getting ourselves out, we had to carry him up the bank, and we were under fire all the time, both of cannon and musketry.
“However, we got out of that without further loss and lay in the woods while the reb battery plugged at our little protecting gunboats. These were soon disabled too and ran up the white flag and surrendered. After we got Raynor from the transport, he was taken back to one of the gunboats, thinking they would protect themselves, and when they surrendered, they took him too. That was the second time he was made prisoner. The Register some weeks ago told of the first time.
“Well, when the rebs had taken the gunboats, and our regiment of 300 had to look out for themselves, Col. Henry Jones, who had succeeded to the command, started down the river to Ft. DeRusse, [sic] about 30 miles away. He left the three wounded men whom we had, in the woods in the care of myself and another man, scaly for us, for we hadn’t a bite to eat, nothing to drink with or cook with, and very hungry and sleepy to begin with. I thought at first to surrender.
“We could hear the rebs on our boats, and at one time I crept through the woods to the edge of the bank intending to surrender, but when I got a good view of them, they looked so revengeful, that I concluded to sneak back and told the boys I couldn’t muster up the courage to surrender, so we would have to get out of there.
Two of the wounded could get along well, but the other man, my associate, and I had to take the turns in carrying, and thus, we started on our weary march through the woods and swamps toward Ft. DeRusse. You had better believe it was bitter work, going as we did without food or rest, and half the time carrying a man.
“We suffered very much for water, as we did not dare to go to the bank of the river, for the reb troops were all along the other side. We had no cups or canteens, and but one hat that would hold water.
After we had been on the go for two or three hours and when it was about noon I took the hat to get some water for the wounded boys I crept through the underbrush at the edge of the riverbank and then made a rush to the water, but as bad luck would have it, just as I started, my foot caught on a rope and I tripped and went sprawling toward the water and couldn’t stop until I went right into the river headfirst. I got a good drink, you had better believe, but by this time some musket balls started whizzing around, so I got a hat full of water and skipped out of there.
“Well, about the middle of the afternoon, we ran into a Frenchman living in the woods He was a Union man and was hiding from the Rebels, for fear of being conscripted. He was very kind to us and warned us to be very quiet, for just then the rebs had a picket post right opposite them, on the other side of the Red River. We were very quiet and stayed there until dark, and for a very good reason, too.
“The rebs at the picket post had a canoe, tied at the water’s edge opposite us, and the Frenchman said he’d swim across after dark, steal the canoe, bring it over to us, and in that and under the cover of night we could float down the river to Fort DeRusse. Now wasn’t that a grand scheme? And the Frenchman carried out the program precisely.
He swam the river, got the canoe, brought it over to us, and at 9 o’clock at night, we started down the river, it would only hold four. I got in with the three wounded men because I was an expert at paddling, and my associate walked along the bank.
“Thus, we proceeded during the long, weary, toilsome night, and at daybreak we caught sight of the Union flag floating over Ft. DeRusse. Never in my life did I see such a glorious sight, and never was my heart so light as I paddled that canoe under the fort, and never was my body so heavy.
Tired was no name for it. I dragged myself to the fort, laid down under a cannon, went to sleep, and didn’t wake till the middle of the afternoon, though the boys declared that the cannon was fired off four times while I was sleeping under it. “Well, that is the end of my ’Narrow Escape,’ or rather the succession of narrow escapes.
The next day, I went to New Orleans, got my furlough, and my visit home was happier because of the marked contrast between home scenes and that awful Red River trip.”
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