ROCKLAND – On July 2 and 3, 1863, 318 beleaguered Rockland area troops charged a hill occupied by 500 Confederate soldiers. Their commanding officer limped along with them, having fallen from a bullet to the achilles tendon. He stood up at the bottom, charged, and fell again at the top. The second officer took a bullet in the side before falling permanently, leaving a commandless regiment to die or retreat to safety.

One hundred and fifty four years later, a monument that honors the legacy of the 4th Maine Regiment has been rededicated in its new, safe location at the American Legion on Limerock Street.

The monument, having been located along the roadside on Talbot Avenue since 1932, is no longer the target of beer bottles being thrown from cars. It has endured its last scrape from a plow, and the people who dare visit no longer fear traffic.

“It was just one drunk teenager away from being destroyed completely,” Captain David Sulin, 20th Maine Company B, told audience members of the Monday, July 3 rededication ceremony at American Legion Post No. 1.

“I’ve changed back to my original wording to that, and I don’t care what people think,” he said.

The 4th Maine Regiment consisted of 10 companies, each with approximately 100 troops.

Four companies came from Rockland, two from Belfast, one each from Brooks and Searsport, and more from Wiscasset and Damariscotta. They all descended on that field between Talbot and Limerock in mid-May 1861.

An estimated 1,100 troops set out for Washington D.C., according to Peter Dalton, author of With Our Faces to the Foe: The history of the 4th Maine Infantry in the War of Rebellion, who spoke at the ceremony.

Not having received their “Blues” yet, they plugged along in mismatched uniforms or similar uniforms to those worn by the 20th Maine Regiment. By the time they reached their first battle, the first Bull Run, having endured temperatures of 105 degrees, their battalion was diminished to approximately 750 men.

They lost 10 percent of their battalion at the first Bull Run, another 15 percent at the second Bull Run, and entered the Fredericksburg battle in December 1862 with 211 men.

Then they were down to 111 with 11 as walking wounded. Recruitment raised the number above 300 again, in time for that fateful charge.

“The relocation and dedication of the Civil War memorial demonstrates the same type of out-of-the-box thinking,” former Rockland Mayor Louise MacLellan-Ruf said. “Don’t give up, what’s right is right, and this was a hill to die on.”

A few years ago, Mike McNeil approached MacLellan-Ruf about moving the monument to safer quarters. 

“I asked Mike if this was a hill he was willing to die on. He said yes,” she said. “If he was willing to die on this hill, so was I.”

Related story:

Rockland Council votes to move Civil War monument

Sarah Thompson can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com