Cold Harbor • Tour the Battlefield • Monuments & Markers • The Armies
The “Nowhere to Go” trailside marker is the twelfth marker along the Cold Harbor primary walking trail. It is next to Confederate breastworks on top of a low ridge north of the Visitor Center.
The view looks east from the low ridge north of the Cold Harbor Visitor Center. The remnants of Confederate field fortifications look down on open plains, giving some idea of the futility of the Union attacks.
Text from the marker:
Nowhere to Go
For nearly two weeks, from June 3 to June 12, the soldiers endured the agony of trench warfare. One Virginian recalled:
Thousands of men cramped up in a narrow trench, unable to go out, or to get up, or to stretch or to stand, without danger to life and limb; unable to lie down or to sleep for lack of room and pressure of peril; night alarms, day attacks, hunger, thirst, supreme weariness, squalor, vermin, filth, disgusting odors everywhere, the weary night succeeded by the yet more weary day; the first glance over the way at day dawn bringing the sharpshooter’s bullet singing past your ear or smashing through your skull, a man’s life is often exacted as the price of a cup of water from the spring.
Location of the marker
This is the twelfth marker along the Cold Harbor primary walking trail. It is a few yards from the previous marker, “Those People Stand No Chance”.