Having exchanged our empty limbers for full ones from the caissons, we are again ordered into position, this time in the field across the Plank Road, where we go into battery prepared to fire to the rear, that apparently being considered the direction in which our greatest danger lay, as the enemy were pressing Gregg very heavily. Soon after this a cheer was heard from the front It was Egan's Division charging to the rear, retaking full possession of the road and contiguous territory.
It was now about sunset, but the sun was obscured from view by threatening clouds, and other trials were in store for us. A Rebel battery (probably the one we had silenced from our position at Burgess' Tavern), located up the White Oak Road, not more than twelve hundred yards distant, and apparently supposing our troops to be massed near or marching down the Dabney's Mill Road, opened a random fire in that direction. We say a random fire, for had not we been screened from view by intervening woods, a foggy mist that had set in would have covered us. But if we had been in full view, and not half as far away, they could not have done better shooting, for every shot raked the Battery from right to left,undoubtedly due to our being at about the limit of their range. It would not have been wise to answer them, they being at the circumference of the circle, as it were, thus letting them know that we were still at its centre, and perhaps drawing a hotter fire in our direction. But whether or not this was the reason governing the commander, no orders were received by us to reply, and so we lay by the guns hugging the ground until torrents of rain and pitchy darkness caused the ‘wicked (foe) to cease from troubling.’
We had not undergone this ordeal unscathed.
