During the day of the 4th, all the wounded who could walk, or be transported in wagons and ambulances, were sent to the rear—many, as it turned out, to be captured or sacrificed in the effort to escape the enemy's cavalry—but near one-half of them, say about 760, were left in the hands of the enemy. This painful result was of course unavoidable. Four surgeons, six assistants, three hospital stewards, and ninety-four attendants were left to attend to the wounded, and with them ten days' supply of such food and medicines as were needed. This was all we could do for them.
Subsequent to the departure of the wounded, Iverson was detached with his brigade as a guard for the train, but unfortunately too late to overtake it and prevent its partial destruction. By a forced march he arrived at Hagerstown soon after the passage of the train, and found a heavy force of the enemy's cavalry driving back our cavalry through the streets. Making a hasty but skillful disposition of his troops, he soon routed them, capturing a considerable number. Great credit is due Brigadier-General Iverson for the handsome and prompt manner in which this affair was managed.
On the night of the 4th we began to fall back towards Hagerstown, by way of Fairfield, bivouacking on the night of the 5th, after a most wearisome march in mud and rain, two miles west of Fairfield.
On the morning of the 6th my division became the rear guard of the army, and early in the morning was attacked by the enemy's skirmishers, deployed over a line extending entirely across the valley, and therefore fully one and a half or two miles long. Later it was attacked from the Emmetsburg road. The morning attack was sharply repulsed by General Daniel's skirmishers on the left, and General Doles' on the right of the road, the Forty-fifth North Carolina, Captain Hopkins commanding, having a pretty brisk action on the extreme left, driving the enemy from a commanding position there, in reply to his summons to surrender. General Daniel's loss was only two killed, two wounded and five missing—General Doles' nothing. The other—an extremely feeble attack—was repelled by a few of General Doles' men. The road being entirely clear behind us for four or five miles, at 3½ P. M. we resumed the march, and proceeded, without annoyance or delay, across the mountain, by Montery Springs, to Waynesburg.
Reaching Hagerstown next day, the division rested there, without serious disturbance until the evening of the 11th, when it was
