During the wee hours of April 2, 1865, an incident on Petersburg’s front lines forever intertwined the lives of three Union enlisted men. They served in the ranks of Company B of the 18th New Hampshire Infantry, a regiment organized the previous summer, and the last raised in the Granite State. Most of the men had been in Virginia for only a few months.
About 4 o’clock that morning, an advance party of skirmishers from the regiment fanned out and advanced from Fort Stedman, which they and the rest of the regiment had helped capture a week earlier, to feel out the enemy position opposite them in preparation for an attack.
The major of the 18th described what happened: “We were to move at a signal and go forward till we drew the rebel fire, and retreat on a signal to be given. We got the signal and promptly moved out over the open field between the two lines till the enemy opened fire, when we were recalled by the signal.”
During this brief action, Clarendon A. Cochran suffered a disabling wound after a gunshot tore through both legs below the knees. Unable to move, he lay where he fell on the open field between the two sides.
One of Cochran’s comrades, John Wilder Boutwell, glimpsed his fallen friend. He ran back under heavy fire to Cochran, lifted him up and placed him across his shoulder, then carried him to safety. Boutwell was assisted by another man, Carlton Nathaniel Camp.
Word of the gallant deed made its way up the chain of command to the leader of the Ninth Corps, Maj. Gen. John G. Parke. He recommended Boutwell and Camp for Medals of Honor. By the time the regiment mustered out in June and July 1865, the War Department had not acted on Parke’s request.
Cochran made a full recovery and kept both of his legs. Some credited Boutwell with his survival and avoidance of an amputation. The two men kept in touch after the war, until Cochran died in 1905 from an auto-immune disease. He was 61 years old.
Four years after Cochran passed, and 44 years after his wounding, Boutwell and Camp received the Medal of Honor. The citation: Brought off from the picket line, under a heavy fire, a comrade who had been shot through both legs.
By this time, Boutwell had become active in the Grand Army of the Republic, serving as commander of his local post. His death at age 76 in 1920 was widely mourned by surviving veterans, friends and family. His passing left Camp as the last surviving member of the trio. He died in 1926 at age 81.
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