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Jan. 1- Mar. 17 and May 9-Sept. 1, 1864. By January 1864, the 47th Ohio Infantry was a battle hardened regiment that had seen hard service in West Virginia, the Vicksburg Campaign, and the bitter campaigns in eastern Tennessee, up to and including Mission Ridge. Organized at Camp Denison in August 1861, the regiment included a number of soldiers of German extraction, including the 39 year old Captain of Co. H., Charles Helmerich, a diligent officer devoted to his duty. Helmerich’s diary for 1864 covers the months during which the 47th Ohio reenlisted after more than two years of hard service in West Virginia, Mississippi, Kentucky, and Tennessee. The earliest weeks of 1864 are relatively uneventful, the entries being correspondingly brief, discussing such matters as the weather, dress parades, the arrest of a soldier for desertion, and securing a turkey. There are, as elsewhere, a few brief notes regarding returns and reports of ordnance and supplies with references, among other things, to the company’s Enfield and Springfield rifles. Helmerich and the other veterans of the 47th who reenlisted were granted a furlough from March 18 to early May, during which time there are no diary entries. They returned to Georgia and rejoined the 15th Army Corps, just as it was swinging into the Atlanta Campaign with a vengeance. From May through September, the 47th was involved in a fearsome succession of engagements with the enemy, large and small, suffering heavily. Having begun the war with 830 effectives, they ended the Atlanta Campaign with only 120. In terse, careful prose, Helmerich describes the battles of Resaca, Dallas, Kennesaw Mountain, the Battle and Siege of Atlanta, and numerous smaller skirmishes and engagements from Pumpkin Vine Creek to Allatoona Hills, the Chattahoochie River, and Jonesboro. At Kennesaw Mountain, in poor translation, he wrote: Toward 6 in the morning, the order came to take our weapons and 60 cartridges… ordered to the Mountain about ¾ of a mile from camp and took our place in line of battle and on the double quick we went over and open field… [under fire, he jumps into a hole to protect himself, pinned down] by a tremendous fire, here was the greatest slaughter that I have ever experienced, lying around me were 6 dead men, most of whom appeared to have been killed by shell…. Although the diary is pocket-sized, during periods of intense action, Helmerich writes in a very close, small hand such that the entries are longer than might be expected and give a fine sense of the impact of the bitter struggle. For reasons not entirely clear, there are few entries after September 1. A medium sized pocket diary in good condition. Written in clear and legible, educated hand, but in old script German, with the exception of the odd word in English. An excellent and active diary from a German American officer, covering many of the key engagements in the Atlanta Campaign.

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