After the North Anna, Grant lopped SE to the Totopotomoy Creek where he ran into Lee again. They faced of for a bit with some skirmishes between the lines before Grant moved on again, possibly looking for battlefield with a name people could pronounce. He found that at Cold Harbor.
Again the Army of the Potomac couldn't move fast enough & Lee dug in on another defensive line. The ground was mostly pretty flat open farmland. There are a lot more trees there now, but the main feature of the battlefield remain plain to see - that is the two parallel lines of entrenchments.
Lee's inaction in recent weeks made Grant think the CSA army might be ready to crack. There were no flanks to go round, so he ordered massed frontal assaults. Arguably one too many, but his plan was sound enough. If he broke through, the war was over in 1864. If he failed, it was not a disaster as Lee did not have the numbers to exploit it. So it was a gamble worth taking & when it didn't work, Grant had another plan.
As we followed Grant & Lee towards Richmond we saw the art of entrenchment advancing rapidly. It was taking them less & less time to throw up better & better defenses.
And it was not just the Rebs, the Union were digging in furiously too.
Another feature we noticed at Cold Harbor was rifle pits for snipers. In 1864 both sides were putting their best marksmen out as snipers to harass the enemy. (As General Sedgwick found to his cost at Spotsylvania).
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Like most towns in the Northeast, my hometown has a Civil War monument in a prominent location. The concrete pedestal has the names of the battles that the men from the Town fought at. Very prominent at the top of one of the faces is "Cold Harbor".
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