Retreat to Falmouth

Tuesday, May 5, 1863

Before dawn Colonel Norman Hall received orders to withdraw his brigade across the Rappahannock River into Falmouth. The Twentieth Massachusetts covered the retreat and was the last regiment to cross the river. They reached their camp in Falmouth by 9:00 P.M.

The Twentieth Massachusetts reported two killed and thirteen wounded as casualties. Captain Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. was among the casualties with a severe wound to his foot from an artillery shell. He would not see service again with the Twentieth Massachusetts for several months.¹

References:
¹Richard F. Miller, Harvard's Civil War: A History of the Twentieth Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry (Lebanon, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 2005), 235-236, 240-41. George A. Bruce, The Twentieth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry 1861 - 1865 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Riverside Press, 1906), 256.