Back to the Narrative of the Battle if you have followed the link from there.

Early in the contest, Gordon was surprised to see the 2nd Massachusetts lying idle and offering no response to the enemy fire opposite. He rode up and found Col. Andrews sitting "rather complacently" on his horse near the regiment's left flank.
"Why don't you order your men to fire?" he shouted.
"Don't see anything to fire at."
"Move by the right flank and join on with the Twenty-seventh, and you will soon find enough to fire at."
This Andrews did, moving the regiment to a place where it was a little more exposed. Gordon heard "no further complaint that he could not find 'anything to fire at.'"

Col. Andrews was a cool man under fire, but when a staff officer from Banks arrived at the wheat field and ordered him to charge his regiment across it, the West Pointer was more than a little nonpulssed. He politely declined to commit suicide. Gordon supported his decision and afterwards called Banks on it.
"General Banks, I disobeyed your order received during the fight."
"What was it, sir."
"An order brought by an officer, purporting to come from you, to charge across the field where my troops were then fighting."
"I never sent such an order."
"I am glad to know it. It would have resulted in our total destruction."

Gordon went on to challenge the staff offcier in question, who "strongly and indignantly" insisted that he had received the order from General Banks. Gordon was inclined to believe the offended officer. Banks, he claimed, had been in earshot of their conversation and yet made no comment ot rebuttal.

After Major James Savage fell with three wounds, Lt. Henry Sturgis Russell refused to leave his side. Unable to carry the injured man off the field, Russell defiantly stood his ground as the Rebels rushed up to demand his surrender. With pistol in hand, Russell threatened to fight to the death unless Savage was promised immediate medical care. His impetuous loyalty earned Russell the admiration both in and beyond the regiment, but landed him in Libby Prison and gave Savage only a few more miserable months of life.

Lt. Robert Gould Shaw was proud of his cousin's courage, but worried constantly about his fate in a Rebel prison. He entertained some thoughts of letting himself get captured too, but realized that such a drastic measure was both "wrong and foolish", especially now that the regiment had so few officers for duty. Besides, he might never see Harry anyway. He confessed that although Harry had been his closest childhood friend, he never fully appreciated "how much his society meant" to him, "nor how much I loved him."

Capt. Edward Abbott's last words were said to have been, "Give it to that flag, men!"

In spite of the efforts of Col. Andrews to notify the families of the deceased, Judge Josiah Abbott learned of his oldest son's death in a newspaper. Although young Fletcher Abbott would survive the war, another brother, Henry Livermore Abbott, would fall in battle.

Capt. Richard Goodwin was too sick to fight. He could barely stand. Days earlier, he had been offended by the Medical Director's suggestion that his case called for his resignation rather than a furlough. "Resignation!," he sniffed. "I should have to be much sicker than I am now before I should take such a step." Now, he was obliged to ride to the battle field in an ambulance, and as Gordon's brigade moved forward in support of Crawford, he crawled out to go the rest of the way on foot. When Chaplain Quint expressed his concern that Goodwin was not strong enough to go, Goodwin smiled weakly as he buckled on his sword and said simply, "I cannot stay when my men go." It was a struggle to keep up. He could only make it with the assitance of his servant. And he had barely reached the front, recalled Robert Shaw, when he was killed. "It was splendid to see those sick fellows walk straight up into the shower of bullets, as if were so much rain; men, who until this year, had lived lives of perfect ease and luxury. Oh! it is hard to believe that we shall never see them again, after having been constantly together for more than a year."

Capt. Samuel Quincy's narrative as a prisoner of war.

Capt. Richard Cary lingered on the field for nearly a day before passing away. His 1st Sergeant, Roland S. Williston, a barber from Holyoke, lay by his side the entire time, wounded in the hand and thigh. A Rebel soldier brought the injured men a dipper of water, but after Cary died, took everything of value off of his body. Only at Williston's begging did they return a ring and a locket bearing a miniature of Cary's wife.

Cary was the first of the fallen officers Lt. Robert Gould Shaw came across. "He was lying on his back with his head on a piece of wood. He looked calm and peaceful, as if he were merely sleeping; his face was beautiful, and I could have stood and looked at it a long while."

Williston's leg was amputated. The faithful sergeant died in Culpeper on August 18th.

Thanks to the efforts of the Regimental Band, many of the wounded were safely brought off the field during the fight. Only after two of its members--Charles E. Rawson & William Smeath--were taken prisoner, did they reluctantly withdraw.

After gaining access to the enemy's line for the purpose of getting some money to the captured officers of the 2nd MA, Fletcher Abbott was referred to General Jubal Early, who was not very pleased to see him. "I suppose he thought I had no business there, inside of their lines, and rather gruffly assented to the arrangement if I could find anyone to undertake it." A Lieutenant Colonel of a Virginia regiment took Abbott's money, but Harry Russell never received it.

Charles Morse described the flag of the 2nd Massachusetts after coming out of the battle. "The eagle was shot off and the staff was shot through by a minie ball, splintering it into two pieces; our color-bearer, Sergeat George, brough off the whole of it. This is the second flag we have honorably used up in battle."

While Gordon's brigade moved toward the rear under the order of its Division commander, Col. Andrews was assailed by a furious officer. Gordon rode forward at the sound of the thickly accented voice threatening to report Andrews for abandoning his post. As he approached, Gordon saw "a little man, surrounded by a very large staff." It was too dark to distinguish the person, but Gordon, who had just chewed out Pope himself, didn't much care who it was.
"Who are you? Who uses such language to this regiment, or any officer belonging to it?"
"Who am I?"
"Yes! Who are you? What is your name?"
"My name?"
"Yes. Your name--if you have a name? Who are you?"
"I am General Sigel."
If Sigel expected this revelation to reduced Gordon to a quivering mass, he was bound to be disappointed.
"You are General Sigel, are you? Well, General Sigel, you cannot address yourself to troops that I command, in this manner. This regiment is the Second Massachusetts,--a regiment that never retreats until ordered. It is just out of the fight, has suffered terrible loss in officers and men, and is now moving under orders to the rear to take up a new position."
At this, Gordon claimed, Sigel apologised. He had seen so many men going to the rear that he presumed they were doing so without authority. Gordon moved his men passed Sigel's fresh troops "whose presence a few hours earlier would have saved our corps, perhaps given us the victory."

At one point after the battle, when Col. Andrews left for Culpeper to check on the wounded, command of the regiment fell upon the shoulders of the junior captain, George Bangs.

During the night after the battle had been fought, the 2nd MA was so close to the enemy line that Pvt. Peter Harrington, of E Company, captured a party of the enemy riding into his position while on sentry duty.

Capt. George Bangs was one of Richard Goodwin's closest friends in the regiment. He wrote to Goodwin's mother: "I miss him day by day and I often think how the loss stretches far beyond the war. Peace, though it will indeed be welcome, can never be to me all it might have been had Dick lived....Poor old Second Regiment, how sadly it has changed."

In response to a letter of condolence sent to her by Gen. Gordon, Helen Cary replied:
Dear Sir, I have received and valued your kind letter of sympathy. It comes to me when the first over-whelming sense of lonliness and desolation are passing away and I begin to look upwards and feel that Richard is with our Saviour, waiting to welcome me. I know I must be as faithful to my duty as he has been to his.

Richard has a real affection for you and often spoke to me of you so that I feel we are not entire strangers. Anyone who loved him is almost sacred to in my eyes now.

I thank God that his death was so peaceful. I do regret that I was not with him to have had one last [illegible] but it was not to be. God's ways are not as our ways.