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My great-great-grandfather wrote that "Cold Harbor has gone down in history as the bloodiest battle in civilization and the breaking of the day for the Confederacy". This is a story from those fateful days in
June 1864:
"And so before they blew the lines up, we were moved back and given leave to go down a ravine to the Appomattox River to wash up and bathe. The entire regiment, freed from its confinement, readily availed itself of this privilege and down we went. After a while some man suggested that we organize a veteran corps (just think of what kind of a
qualification those who had been to Manassas, to Petersburg, needed to make him a veteran). But, the qualification was that out of the entire regiment there was but one man who hadn't the power to show a scratch or
bullet. Every other man in the regiment was battle scarred; some of them more. The writer could show six, all of them more or less scars.
"And now I must tell you of the one that had no bullets to show. He was Billie Echols. Just a day or so before we moved from the trenches one of old Company D was shot in the rifle pits. His companion called
back and was told in answer that no man could hope to go from the trenches to the rifle pits and live. He called back 'He is bleeding to death'. In a moment every man of us sprang to our guns and opened fire
on the embrasures. Through the Yankees' fire Bill Echols and Jim Crawford grabbed the litter, jumped over the breast works, ran to the rifle pit, laid the wounded man on the litter and ran out with him, saving his life.
"'Greater love hath no man than this.'
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