Keep Your Head Down trailside marker

Cold Harbor • Tour the Battlefield • Monuments & Markers • The Armies

The “Keep Your Head Down” trailside marker is the third marker along the one mile Cold Harbor Battlefield primary walking trail.

Keep Your Head Down trailside marker on the Cold Harbor battlefield outside Richmond, Virginia

Keep Your Head Down

 This shallow, winding depression is all that remains of a “zigzag” constructed by Union troops in June 1864. In trench warfare, soldiers dug ditches, called zigzags or covered-ways, to provide protection from sharpshooters as they moved from one line of entrenchments to another.

Soldiers at Cold Harbor crawled through covered-ways carrying heavy loads of rations or ammunition, prompting one infantryman to remark that he felt “like some unholy cross between a pack mule and a snake.”

Keep Your Head Down trailside marker on the Cold Harbor battlefield outside Richmond, Virginia

Location of the marker

The marker is the third marker along the one mile Cold Harbor Battlefield primary walking trail. It is about a quarter mile from the trailhead at the Visitor Center. (37°35’17.3″N 77°17’01.1″W)

>Next marker: 4 – Keep Digging