Excerpt from A Prisoner of War in Virginia
© 2000 ProofmarkGeorge Haven Putnam
We remained under guard in a field to the south of the Cedar Creek bridge until two in the afternoon. We were out of sight of the lines on which the fighting was being conducted, but we realised that our men must have been driven back and that Early's force was in close pursuit, because the sound of the firing had gone off far to the northward. Between twelve and two there had been a lull, or else the firing was so far distant that it no longer reached our ears. A little after two, there was a revival of the sound of musketry and we thought it was coming our way. The impression that there might be some change in the condition of affairs was strengthened by our being hurried into a column of march and started along the pike southward. Our hosts had forgotten to give us any mid-day meal and most of us had not had time for any breakfast before getting into fighting line in the early morning, so that we were rather faint for a hurried tramp. During one of the short rests that had to be allowed to tired-out men in the course of the afternoon, our brigade dog who, very unwisely for himself, had followed the line of march, was taken possession of by some hungry men and a little later on one of my own group was good enough to give me a hurriedly toasted chunk. I do not know how I should have been able to hold up for the afternoon if it had not been for my share of the dog.
While, on the ground of our being hurried southward, we were somewhat encouraged about the final outcome of the battle, it was not easy to believe that what had seemed in the early morning to be so thorough a defeat could have been changed into a victory. In fact, it was weeks before, through the leakage of news into the prison, we got knowledge of the actual outcome of the day. In the course of the evening, our guards remembered to scatter among us a little hardtack taken from one of our own commissary waggons, but the ration was very small for the amount of marching that had to be done with it. Sometime before midnight, in company with VanderWeyde, with whom I had fallen into 'chumming' relations, I made a break for liberty. We remembered the region through which we had marched not long before as 'ruthless invaders,' and it was our idea to strike for a dry ditch which was on the farther side of a field adjoining the road. We bolted just behind the nearest guard and took him so far by surprise that his shot and that of the guard next in line did not come near enough to be dangerous, and we succeeded in tumbling into the ditch, which we found, unfortunately, to be no longer dry. There was, in fact, an inch or two of water in the bottom. There was nothing to do but to lie quiet and wait until the column of prisoners and guards had passed.
The abiding place through the night and through the greater part of the day was, as said, the strip of floor allotted to each. It is my memory that, at this time, Libby was not so crowded but that each man could have the advantage of putting his head back against the wall. Later, when we were transferred to Danville, the arrangement of space required four rows of sleepers, two with their heads to the wall and two with their heads to the centre. The wall spaces were, of course, in demand. At the point of the wall in Libby where my own head rested {more or less restlessly}, I found scratched {apparently with the point of a nail} on the two or three bricks the names of previous occupants of the quarters, names representing in most cases men who had 'joined the majority.' I naturally added, in order to complete the record, my own name on a brick the corner of which was still free. Some years after the war, a correspondent wrote to me from Richmond that he could, if I wished, send me this autographed brick in consideration of the payment of five dollars. As, however, there would have been no difficulty in scratching my name on another brick, I did not think the purchase worthwhile. That brick and its companions are now resting somewhere in Ashtabula County, Ohio. Some of you will recall that the Libby building was purchased by some speculators to be put up in Chicago for exhibition. It was a stupid plan, for the historic interest of the building was properly to be connected with its location, and there was something repellent in the thought of using as a showplace a structure which represented so much of pathetic tragedy. I was myself not at all displeased to learn that the train carrying the timbers and the bricks of Libby had been wrecked in Ashtabula, and the materials scattered over the surrounding fields.
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