Of the 2,047 regiments in the Union Army, the First Maine Heavy Artillery sustained the greatest loss in battle. Not only was the number killed the largest, but the percentage of killed was exceeded in only one instance. Again, its loss at Petersburg, June 18th, was the greatest of any one regiment in any one action, during the war. It made the charge that day with about 900 muskets, losing 632 in killed and wounded. Only a month previous, the regiment had suffered a terrible loss in its gallant fight on the Fredericksburg Pike, near Spotsylvania, May 19, 1864, where it lost 82 killed and 394 wounded; total, 476. Among the killed were six officers, and in the battle of June 18th, just referred to, thirteen officers were killed or mortally wounded, besides twelve others who were hit. This regiment was raised, principally, in the Penobscot Valley, and was organized August 21, 1862, as the Eighteenth Maine Infantry. Major Daniel Chaplin, of the Second Maine, was appointed Colonel. He fell, mortally wounded, August 18, 1864, at Strawberry Plains, Va. (Deep Bottom). The regiment left the State on August 24, 1862, and was changed to heavy artillery in December. It remained in the defences of Washington until May, 1864, when it joined Grant's Army at Spotsylvania. All its losses occurred within a period of ten months. During the spring campaign of 1865, it was in De Trobriand's Brigade of Mott's Division, Second Corps.