By LAWRENCE C. HALL

“Charge bayonets! Forward, double‑quick! March!”

The shout of nearly 400 blue coated men of the Bucks-

Mont rang above the din of battle, and the 104th Penn-

sylvania Regiment lunged toward its moment of glory in

the Civil War.

Unknown to them, the bank of powder smoke and

woods they ran toward concealed thousands of

Confederate soldiers.

Richmond. Va., was a tantalizing five miles away. 

The bloody path of the 104th’s charge would end at the

point closest to the Confederate capital that the Army of

the Potomac would attain for the next three years.

By the time the sun set, almost half of the little Union

contingent—made up primarily of men from places like

Plumstead, New Hope. Doylestown and Montgomery

and Lehigh County towns and villages like them—

would be dead or wounded.

And one entire company of the 104th, fighting a lonely

battle cut off from the regiment, would be prisoners of

war.

It was the battle in which the regiment rescued its

colors against overwhelming odds.

It was the battle of Fair Oaks, May 31, 1862.

The regiment was nine months old, almost to the day.

Men like Jeremiah Wambold of Quakertown; Franklin

Batchelor of Horsham and Alfred Cox of Warrington

had answered the call of Doylestown’s Col. W. W. H.

Davis by the hundreds when he began the regiment’s

formation Aug. 30, 1861.

They signed up on the old exhibition grounds half a

mile southwest of Doylestown, where the Central

Bucks School District bus garages and Memorial Field

are now located.

The site was given the name of Camp Lacey in honor

of the American commander at the Revolutionary War

battle of Crooked Billet in Warminster.

Four hundred three-year volunteers joined the first