Thomas Burk

He Went Back Under Fire to Carry His Colonel Out

Thomas Burk served in the United States Army during the American Civil War with Company H of the 97th New York Infantry. He entered the conflict as an enlisted soldier and was serving as a sergeant when he performed the act of courage that would eventually earn him the Medal of Honor. His military career later advanced to the rank of first lieutenant, but his lasting place in American military history came from a rescue carried out under enemy fire during the Battle of the Wilderness.

By the spring of 1864, the 97th New York Infantry was serving in the Army of the Potomac as Union forces began the Overland Campaign in Virginia. Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant intended to maintain continuous pressure on General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, beginning with a major confrontation in the dense woodland west of Fredericksburg.

The Battle of the Wilderness began on May 5, 1864. Fighting in the tangled forest was especially difficult. Thick vegetation reduced visibility, disrupted formations, and made conventional battlefield control extremely challenging. Soldiers often fought at close range without a clear view of the larger engagement, while smoke and undergrowth made it difficult to determine where friendly and enemy units were positioned.

On May 6, the fighting intensified.

Burk was serving as a sergeant with Company H when Colonel Charles Wheelock of the 97th New York became unable to remove himself from the battlefield. With Confederate fire still threatening the area, Wheelock remained exposed and in immediate danger.

Burk chose to go back for him.

Leaving relative safety, he returned to the dangerous position where the colonel lay. Wheelock could not make his own way from the field, so Burk took on the burden himself. Under enemy fire, he lifted and carried the officer away from the battlefield.

The act placed Burk directly in danger. He was not simply helping a wounded comrade behind the lines; he deliberately returned to an exposed combat area and physically carried his commanding officer to safety while the battle continued around them.

That rescue became the defining action of his military service.

Burk’s Medal of Honor recognition focused on the simple but extraordinary fact that he went back under fire and brought Colonel Wheelock from the field. His documented deed requires no embellishment. There was no captured flag or dramatic enemy surrender attached to his citation. His courage was demonstrated through a direct decision to risk his own life so another soldier could survive.

The Battle of the Wilderness itself ended without a decisive tactical victory, but it marked a change in Union strategy. Rather than retreating after the bloody engagement, Grant moved his army southward and continued the campaign against Lee. For soldiers like Burk, the battle became one episode in a much longer and increasingly costly series of operations that would continue through Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, and ultimately toward Petersburg.

Burk survived the war and continued to advance in military responsibility. From the rank of sergeant, which he held during his Medal of Honor action, he eventually rose to first lieutenant, the highest verified rank of his service.

More than thirty years passed before his courage at the Wilderness received the nation’s highest military recognition. On August 24, 1896, Thomas Burk was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions of May 6, 1864.

The long delay between action and recognition was not unusual for Civil War recipients. Many deeds from the conflict were formally reviewed decades later, after veterans, comrades, military records, and official documentation had brought individual acts of gallantry to the attention of the War Department.

For Burk, the Medal of Honor commemorated one clearly defined moment: returning under hostile fire to rescue Colonel Wheelock.

His broader wartime service is also represented by the Army Civil War Campaign Medal. Established decades after the war, the medal recognized qualifying United States Army service during the Civil War. Unlike the Medal of Honor, which marked Burk’s specific act of personal courage at the Wilderness, the campaign medal represents the larger period of military service in which that action took place.

Burk lived for many years after the Civil War and survived into the twentieth century. By then, the battlefield where he had carried his colonel to safety had become part of the national memory of the Overland Campaign, and the generation that fought there was rapidly passing into history.

He died in 1926, more than six decades after the Battle of the Wilderness.

Thomas Burk’s legacy is rooted in a decision made in the middle of chaos. The battlefield was dangerous, visibility was poor, and enemy fire remained active. He could have remained where he was safer. Instead, he turned back.

He returned for a man who could not save himself.

By carrying Colonel Charles Wheelock from the field, Burk demonstrated the kind of courage that is measured not by words, but by immediate action in the face of mortal danger. Decades later, the Medal of Honor formally recognized what had happened in the Wilderness on May 6, 1864: a sergeant chose to go back under fire, lifted his colonel, and carried him to safety.