Bugler John Cook

During a fierce battle near the Hagerstown Pike, John Cook followed Lieutenant Stewart’s section into position near two straw stacks, where Confederate infantry emerging from the West Woods immediately poured a volley into the battery and brought down many of the men. The straw stacks gave some shelter to the wounded, but even there men were struck again or killed. After Captain Campbell brought up four more guns and was quickly wounded, Cook carried his order for Stewart to take command, then, finding most of the cannoneers down, took ammunition from a dead soldier and worked at the guns himself. In the vortex of the fighting, the battery faced three desperate Confederate attempts to capture it, with the last assault coming within ten or fifteen feet of the guns. General Gibbon, seeing the battery’s condition, came to a gun in the pike and, though plainly visible in his brigadier-general’s uniform, worked as a gunner and cannoneer. The battery lost forty-four men killed and wounded and about forty horses in what Cook recalled as a hard fight.

Pennsylvania · United States