63

men obeyed as readily as they had ever done. "Order arms! Shoulder arms!

Present arms! Shoulder arms! Forward! March!"

The effect was magical. The men recovered themselves and the formation
of the regiment was restored. But all this had its effect in another direction,
for the brave men coming to the rear had observed it, and rallied on the regiment's
flanks. The gallant color-bearer of Hampton's Legion planted his colors on the
left of the Marylanders and swore it should go no farther to the rear. The men
of the Legion rallied around it. They had no officers; they had been killed or
wounded. Then came fragments of the Twelfth Alabama, Fifty-second Virginia
and Thirty-eighth Georgia, and in the time it takes to narrate it Colonel Johnson
had a small brigade around him that otherwise would have been lost.

But he was to be still further reinforced, for the gallant General Charles S.
Winder had just come upon the field and had witnessed with admiration the
conduct of his fellow-Marylanders. Divining Johnson's object, he sent Captain
McHenry Howard of his staff to him with orders to wait until he could bring
up his First Virginia Brigade.

Thus formed, they moved forward under the lead of that gallant officer. The
enemy met this advance with great firmness. His heavy musketry and artillery
fire was very destructive upon the advancing Confederate lines. Nothing daunted
by the fall of officers and men the column pressed on. driving the enemy before
them, until night prevented further pursuit.

Five guns, numerous small arms and many prisoners were among the
fruits of this rapid and resistless advance.

General Charles S. Winder, in his official report of the battle of Games' Mill,
says : "I cannot speak too highly of that soldier and gentleman, Colonel Bradley
T. Johnson, with his small band of veterans, ever ready to advance on the enemy
and aid our cause."

That night the First Maryland rested among the dead and dying of Sykes'
regulars that lay around the McGehee house, and the next morning Ewell's
division, with General J. E. B. Stuart's Cavalry, were ordered to destroy the
York River Railroad at Dispatch Station.

On the 29th of June General Ewell moved his division to the vicinity of
Bottom's Bridge to prevent the enemy crossing at that point, but on the following
day was ordered to return to co-operate with the movements of Jackson's
command, and on the morning of the 30TH he crossed the Chickahominy.

On the afternoon of the 1st of July the First Maryland reached Malvern
Hill. The battle had just begun, and the little regiment was held in reserve until
its close, though during all that time under one of the most terrible artillery fires
it had ever encountered, and nothing is so demoralizing to a soldier as to have to
take an enemy's fire without being able to return it. During one period of this