The Right Wing rested fitfully without shelter and with their muskets loaded, capped and at the ready. There were sounds of troops in camp beyond the thickets to their front. Cloudy skies made the night darker and the mist made it colder. The long December night passed slowly without the heat of a campfire to warm the men. Few slept more than for a few brief moments their minds never free of anxiety for the fight that they knew would come with the morning.

In Woodruff’s Brigade the men of the 25th Illinois and the 35th Illinois were veterans. They had, as the soldier’s slang had it, “seen the elephant”. The 81st Indiana, the third regiment of the brigade had not. All along the line the soldiers lay in battle line formation, some of them lost in solitary thoughts pulling on a pipe of tobacco; others peered out to the pitch black of the cedar breaks trying to see any sign or movement that might betray an attack; still others whispered conversation with their equally wakeful neighbors. In those intervals of silence they could here the sounds of muffled conversations to their front. Johnny Reb was as wakeful as Billy Yank and awful close.

A hundred yards ahead of the main body the companies deployed as skirmishers the previous day kept the picket line. Theirs was the loneliest vigil. One man in three kept watch, the others tried to sleep. In the line the neighbors lay almost touching each other. The skirmishers were separated by their fellows by three yard intervals. One company of skirmishers covered the front of the whole brigade of 10 companies in line. It was lonely work and the pickets knew they would see the first blood drawn in the contest – the enemies and their own. The long December night was made longer by the anticipation and the conflicting prayers to make it last longer and for the dawn to get the waiting over with.

Company A of the Thirty-Fifth Illinois and Company K of the Twenty-Fifth held the picket line that night. Company A was made up of Piatt County men, most from Bement, the village that had grown up around the station on the Great Western Railroad. The men of Company K came from Dallas (now Indianola) in Vermilion County, Both regiments enlisted in the summer of 1861 and had but about six months left of their three year enlistments.

At about 6:00 in the morning the word was passed down the line to send men back to the cook’s wagon for coffee. Each man was a member of a mess, five or six comrades who pooled their rations and made their meals together. There would be no breakfast cooked that morning. The men would make do with breaking up the hardtack crackers they carried with them. Only the coffee would be warm to help ward off the pre-dawn chill of December 31, the last day of 1862. Just as one or two from each mess roused to fetch coffee for his mates the air was broken with the rattle of musketry punctuated by the boom of artillery to their right.

The sound grew and grew becoming an awful roar. Kirk’s brigade in line just south of the Franklin road the course of Gresham Lane and in advance of Post’s position took the weight of the attack on its left flank. Kirk was down in the first volley, a minie ball in his thigh and the rebels surged forward, a whole division arrayed in three waves. Willich’s brigade of Johnson’s Division had been brought up during the night and posted to Kirk’s right in an L-shaped formation, two regiments in line with Kirk facing south and two at right angles facing west toward the Widow Smith’s house on Overall Creek. Johnson’s Third Brigade, Baldwin’s three regiments, followed Willich and was in line facing west just beyond Gresham’s lane.

It took just 5 minutes of desperate struggle before Kirk’s line broke and the attack slammed into Willich’s left flank. General Willich had been away from the command, conferring at Davis’ headquarters. Headed back he heard the sound of the engagement and spurred his horse to where he had left his men. He blundered through the tick woods and found himself surrounded by dismounted Texas infantry. Two of Johnson’s three Brigade commanders were out of the battle. Their men had been caught unprepared, cooking breakfast, boiling coffee and with their arms stacked.

Johnson’s Division was shattered in a little over 15 minutes and the broken regiments streamed north and west to the timber along Overall Creek. Post, flanked and with the enemy in his year ordered his Brigade’s right to fall back and form a new line in the woods 300 yards north along Gresham’s lane. The retreat started in good order while the rebels regrouped tried to order and integrity back to their line of battle. Post looked at his watch. Woodruff’s men could see none of this. They could only guess at what the sounds to their right meant. They could only look to their guns waiting for the attack to fall on them.

Colonel Thomas D. Williams commanding the 25th Illinois was a railroader in civilian life, station agent at Chebanse and a prominent citizen in that growing railroad community. He pulled his watch out of his pocket as the flood of sound ebbed for a bit and the rattle of firing on the skirmish line commenced. It was a railroaders reflex honed by years of noting the time trains arrived and departed. He announced the time to nobody in particular. “6:30 AM”.

Captain Carpenter’s 8th Wisconsin Battery, positioned between the 25th and General Sills’ brigade on its left, had double charged its guns with canister and trained them on the brigade’s front in anticipation of the opening of the morning’s festivities. The battery had to hold its fire until the pickets were driven in. There was confusion as the men scrambled back to their position, coffee and tin cups thrown to the air in their haste to rearm themselves. Carpenters’ cannoneers did not have long to wait. The weight of the Rebel assault quickly drove the pickets in, firing as they fell back. Surprise had left the defenders disorganized as Company K reached the main line at the fence closely pursued by the Rebels.

The 25th held its ground long enough to fire a ragged volley at the double ranks charging them and then retired across the fallow field to their rear to reform in line about a hundred yards behind their previous position. The Rebels were delayed by the fence, throwing it down in some spots and clambering over it in others. Some in the second ranks paused to pickup muskets discarded by retreating Yanks or out of the hands of the wounded soldiers that they had overwhelmed. These had been armed only with sticks. The Confederates were short of arms and ammunition and counted on being able to arm themselves from the debris of the battlefield.

With an interval opened up between its friends and the foe the 8th Wisconsin added the din of its cannon to the cacophony of battle. The effect was dramatic as the Rebels wavered under the weight of the canister. Colonel Thomas D. William’s commanding the 25th rallied his men and led them in a counter-charge to reclaim the positions from which they had been driven just moments before. Back at the fence they reloaded and prepared to meet what they knew from experience would be the next wave of attack as Hardee sent regiment after regiment forward.

Moments later the Rebel artillery opened up with shells exploding over the position raining shards of metal down on the re-organized line. Solid shot plowed lanes through the cotton and lines of blue-clad soldiers. Carpenter shifted two of his guns to counter-battery fire and quickly silenced the Confederate battery. An exploding shell burst over the battery while its Captain was sighting a Parrot gun. He fell dead across the breach.

Then the infantry came again. Again the weight of the attack drove the Yanks back. Again the artillery poured canister into the attackers. The second wave faltered and then fell back to the woods and the 25th followed to reclaim the position for a second time.

As the regiment reached its former position at the fence its color-sergeant was hit and as the colors began to fall Col. Williams grabbed the staff and raised it high with his left hand while his right, still holding his sword grasped the top rail of the fence. He turned to his men and shouted an order, “We will plant it here boys and rally the old 25th around it, and here we will die!” Musketry was filling the air with the buzz of leaden bees, and one must have seemed louder than the rest. It hit the Colonel in the chest, killing him almost instantly. As he fell the third wave of Hardee’s attack swarmed out of the woods driving the Yanks back yet again into the dense timber to the rear. They carried their Colonel’s body with them. Capt. Westford Taggart rallied the regiment there.