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The 2nd Pennsylvania Provisional Heavy Artillery was commanded at the Battle of the Crater (July 30, 1864—part of the Siege of Petersburg) by Lt. Col. Benjamin G. Barney.  When Barney was wounded, Capt. James W. Haig took command.  Early in the morning of July 30, a mine under the Confederate lines was detonated, killing over 250 men of Pegram’s Artillery Battery and Elliott’s South Carolina Infantry Brigade.  The Union attack that followed was a disaster.  The fighting was over by early afternoon.  For the next eight months Gen. Ulysses S. Grant would work to outflank the Confederate defenses. He would not launch another direct assault on the Petersburg lines until their final collapse in April of 1865.

The Second Pennsylvania Heavy Artillery was aroused at about 4.45 o'clock on the morning of July 30th, by what seemed an earthquake, and the sight that presented itself was grand to behold. A column of fire and smoke with cannon, horses, men and earth co-mingled therewith, some 200 or more feet in the air, certainly was a sight never to be forgotten by those who saw it. The debris caused by the springing of the mine had barely descended to the ground, when a cheer, indicating a charge of Federal troops, was heard, and those in front saw the Third Brigade Hedlie's Division of the 9th Corps, led by the "Provisional boys" enter the "crater." The enemy soon recovered from their surprise, and in an almost increditable short space of time opened one of the most terrific fires of artillery and musketry of the whole war.  From “History of the Second Pennsylvania Veteran Heavy Artillery” by George W. Ward, Secretary of the Survivor’s Association of the Regiment, Revised, 1904. p. 87.