With a Dutch Sharpshooter at the Battle of Atlanta

    On the afternoon of July 22, 1864, Private John Henry Puck of Co. G of the 37th Ohio Volunteer Infantry volunteered for what he thought would be a safe assignment. He along a dozen or so of his fellow Germans of the 37th Ohio took positions on the top floor of a brick house adjacent to a railroad cut and began to knock holes in the walls to shoot from. Fighting off a Rebel assault from the confines of the brick house was certainly safer duty than taking their chances behind the breastworks. But things didn't work out quite according to plan as Puck remembered at the 1889 reunion of the regiment in St. Mary's Ohio.

The Troup-Hurt House presents one of the most dramatic focal points in the Battle of Atlanta cyclorama. As remembered by Puck, the house served as General Morgan Smith's headquarters and then a sharpshooter's nest for men from the 37th Ohio. Once the Confederate overran the Federal lines at this point, Puck leaped from a second story window and fled to rejoin his command. 


On the morning of July 22nd, it soon became known that the Rebels in our front were gone and we were early on the move to follow them, but as we came to their abandoned line of works, it became evident that our further advance would be disputed. Our regiment’s position was in front of a 2-1/2 story brick house that stood about 200 yards to the right of the Decatur & Atlanta Railroad and from 12-15 back of the breastworks. Of this house, it was said that some enthusiastic Rebel was building it when the war broke out; he said to his workmen that they would first go and whip the Yankees and then come back and finish the house. I will say here that the house was never finished. 


Our division commander General Morgan L. Smith had his headquarters at this house and much of the conversation between staff officers was overhead by us. I remember that Major Charles Hipp, who was in command of the regiment at the time, made suggestions to General Smith about barricading the railroad and burning a collection of houses and outbuildings that stood to the left oblique in our front. But General Smith would not have it, saying that the buildings would come handy for hospital use and to barricade the railroad would be labor lost as he was confident we would take dinner in Atlanta. But we were doomed to disappointment as the dinner that General Smith promised us that day was not realized until the 1st of September.

General Morgan L. Smith

It must have been near 2 p.m. when we could see that the Rebels were making active preparations for an attack when Major Hipp asked for volunteers to go into the brick house as sharpshooters. Some 12 or 15 of us from Companies C and G responded, I being among the number. Upon reaching the upper story of the house, we immediately distributed ourselves into the different rooms and began to break holes through the walls to enable us to fire upon the Rebels as they advanced. And none too soon, for we had hardly made our portholes of sufficient size to enable us to see and fire through when the Rebels advanced in solid columns. By our steady fire poured into them they were forced to retreat. I will say that I have always been on the opinions that if General Smith had heeded our Major’s suggestions, that our division would have been spared the humiliation of being driven out of their works, something that had never happened to them before.

It seems that the Rebels only retreated far enough to come under shelter of the houses before mentioned and from there marched onto the railroad track and also a wagon road running parallel with the railroad and there being a deep cut in both we could neither see or hurt them. I am confident that if a battery with proper support had been stationed at these roads the Rebels never could have broken our line. But as there was neither a battery or infantry there, the Rebels had an easy task of it for they marched through our line with right shoulder arms and opened fire on our line at right angles. They fired with such telling effect that our line soon gave way and the Rebels again occupied their works.

It was in this engagement that I had the most thrilling experience of any battle that I was ever engaged in during my whole service, for we in the house were in blissful ignorance of what was going on below. We had been ordered to keep a sharp lookout in our front and the house not having any openings in the sides towards the railroad, we could not see what was going on upon our left. I presume those of you who were there were too busy just then to pay any attention to us if you even knew we were in the house. We expected that if the Rebels made another attack they would make it from the first direction as the first one, but as from 15-20 minutes went by and no Rebels in sight, we supposed that the fight was over.

Was this soldier with Puck in the Troup-Hurt House? He could have been; this is Corporal John Blase, Co. C, 37th Ohio Volunteer Infantry. 

All at once we heard firing on our left but as it only last a few minutes, we paid very little attention to it, never dreaming that we were in danger or that our line could be broken. After several minutes we became uneasy and wanted to see what our boys below were doing, so one of the boys in the room I was in leaned out of the window in order to see the works below when to his horror he discovered that our boys were gone and the works full of Rebels! Upon learning this fact, we hurried down the stairs as fast as we could, but upon reaching the second floor, we found that the Rebel soldiers were already in the house and some of them had started to come up stairs. Here was a dilemma: to stay in the house meant certain capture and perhaps many months in Rebel prisons and to jump from the second story window there would be but a very slim chance to escape. We did not know that the Rebels were already watching every window in the house, but there was no time to investigate. If we were going to try to escape, we must act.

The 37th Ohio monument at Vicksburg National Battlefield. The 37th Ohio was the third German regiment to leave the Buckeye state, the first being the 9th Ohio and the second being the 28th Ohio. Several more would follow after the 37th including the 58th, 106th, 107th, and 108th regiments.
(Image by Phil Spaugy)

I with perhaps a half dozen more men made a break from the windows and jumped down, not knowing whether the Rebels were there to take us in. The house as I remember it had five windows on the side we jumped out from, and I chose the center window, I being in the lead of two more boys of my company. I will state here that when we went to work in the morning to change front to the Rebel works, our regiment unslung knapsacks and piled them up in the rear of the house. When I jumped out of the window, I landed upon the large pile of knapsacks which broke my fall but sent me sprawling to the ground. As I rose to my feet, there were several Rebels standing at the corner of the house to my right who commanded me to halt but without taking a second thought I started on a dead run and think better time was never made than I made on that run of perhaps 400-500 yards.

After running this distance, I overtook a small squad of our boys and no Rebels being in sight, we started to where one of our boys said our regiment was located. We had only gone about a hundred yards when General John Logan came riding along, ordering us to stay where we were and in less time than it takes me to tell it, he had gathered from 1,200-1,500 men from I should say at least a half dozen regiments. After forming this mixed force into line and making a short speech, we went forward again with a will, charging our lost position. We came out of the woods a little to the left of the brick house and captured a number of prisoners. 

Source: 

Ninth Reunion of the 37th Regiment, O.V.V.I., St. Mary’s, Ohio, September 10-11, 1889. Toledo: Montgomery & Vrooman, 1890, pgs. 48-51

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