Henry A. Smith to Family
Primary tabs
I suppose the bad news will reach you before this letter does and you will be very
anxious to know how whither I am alive or not the rebels went around the
Mountain and come out at New town a place miles before Strasburg intending to
surround the whole force but our train of teams started for Winchester early in the
morning just as the rebels come out on the road then they began to pour the Shells
and bullets into the train. when the Brigade got down there there were about 15000 of
them in and around the town as soon as we got down there and was our situation we
took a lane and retreated down into the Woods among their Shell and bullets and kept
on and got to Winchester about 10 Oclock where we stoped over night they renewed the
fight
in the morning and our men gave them battle for a while then
retreated and retreated in good order instead of taking the road to Harpers Ferry
took the left hand road to Martinsburg and they did not follow us any further the
next morning we forded the river to this place General Shields went to Staunton and
left only 5000 men with us which more than half was Cavalry and only five or six
Pieces of Artillery. Some of the regiments got cut up pretty bad nearly one third of
our regiment are mising Companies A and G got cut up very bad Co A can muster only 18
men and Co G only 8 men our Com pany have lost 34 men I am well and lucky to say did
not get hurt thank God We got out as well as we did May 28 the mising men keep coming
in over two hundred of our regt are reported to be coming in some of which have
already arrived our Company have only five men mising now news got here
this morning that Generals Fremont and Shields were near New Market following up the
rebels ithe a large forde General Banks says that the enemies loss was greater than
ours as our men played all sorts of tricks on them I will wend this letter as soon as
the mail goes out it will go out in a day or two I wrote to you when we were at
Strasburg and I signed the order and sent that back but dont know whither you
received it or not tell Bill Mike and Bert to be very carefull about rowing round in
the boat where the water is swift or deep and to be careful about going in
swiminging where the water is deep I shall write more particulars in my
next I must close by biding you good bye and hoping you are all well
H. A. Smith