The Cold Harbor Killing Fields
The heaviest fighting on June 3 occurred at three separate spots outside the present boundary of the national park. You are looking northward toward one of those places. Two brigades of infantry from the Eighteenth Corps charged from right to left across the flat, open field beyond the creek. The Confederate fortifications were leveled long ago, but in 1864 they provided security for Southern riflemen and artillerists who swept the open ground with their fire.
“The surface of the field seemed like a boiling caldron from the incessant pattering and ploughing of shot, which raised the dirt in geysers and spitting sands,” wrote a horrified Massachusetts soldier. Many of the terrible tales of Cold Harbor have their origin here: men being shot down so rapidly “that those in rear of them thought they were lying down,” and Union soldiers piling up bodies of dead comrades as emergency protection.
This ground—some of the bloodiest at Cold Harbor—is private property. Please respect it by staying on this side of the pond.
Marker is on General Smith Drive (private) 0.1 miles north of Anderson-Wright Drive, on the right when traveling north.
Courtesy hmdb.org
