Keep Your Head Down
This shallow, winding depression is all that remains of a “zigzag” constructed by Union troops in June 1864. In trench warfare, soldiers dug ditches, called zigzags or covered-ways, to provide protection from sharpshooters as they moved from one line of entrenchments to another.
Soldiers at Cold Harbor crawled through covered-ways carrying heavy loads of rations or ammunition, prompting one infantryman to remark that he felt “like some unholy cross between a pack mule and a snake.”
Marker can be reached from the intersection of Anderson-Wright Drive and Cold Harbor Road (Virginia Route 156).
Courtesy hmdb.org
