In Reserve

Among entrenchments built by soldiers of the Union Eighteenth Corps less than ¼ mile from the front lines at Cold Harbor, regiments typically rotated out of the front lines every other day, creating the many layers of reserve lines seen here. Although reserve positions were not safe from enemy fire, soldiers there could relax their vigilance somewhat. During the second week of the battle, a New Hampshire soldier wrote that bullets frequently came over to the rear lines after traveling nearly one third of a mile, their hum often giving timely warning, and that enemy shells were also plentiful, seeming to rise high and then come straight down into the rear trenches with a threatening whistle and a final crack and whirr of fragments. The Confederate army did not have Coehorn mortars at Cold Harbor, but instead improvised by burying the back ends of some cannon to elevate their barrels and lob conventional artillery rounds high into the air, a difference that men under fire probably could not detect.

Mechanicsville, Virginia · United States