The Portland daily press., 1880-07-01
Detroit Free Press.l
Supporting the Guns.
How Field Battery Comes into Action.

Did you ever see battery take position?
1t hasn't the thrill of cavalry charge nor
the grimness of line of bayonets moving slow
ly and determinedly on, but there is peculiar
excitement about it that makes old veterans
rise in their saddles and cheer.
We have been fighting on the edge Of the
woods. Every cartridge box has been emptied
once and more, and fourth of the brigade has
melted away in dead, wounded and missing
Not cheer is heard in the whole brigade. We
know that we are being driven foot by foot,
and that when we break back once more the
line will go to pieces and the enemy will pour
through the gap.
Here comes help!
Down the crowded highway gallops bat
terry, withdrawn from some other position to
ours. The field fence is scattered while you
could count thirty, aud the guns rush for the
hill behind us. Six horses to a piece-three
riders to each gun. Over dry bitches where a
farmer would not drive wagon, through
clumps Of bushes, over logs foot thick, every
rider lashing his team and yelling-the sight
behind us makes us forget the foe in front.
The guns jump two feet high as the heavy
wheels strike rock or log, but not horse slack
ems his pace. not a cannoneer loses his seat.
Six guns, six caissons sixty horses, eighty
men, race from the brow of the hill as if he
who reached it first would be knighted
A moment ago the battery was confused
mob. We look again, and the six guns are in
position, the detached horses hurrying away,
the ammunition chests Open and along our
line runs the command! "Give them one more
volley and fall back to support the guns!" We
have scarcely obeyed, when boom! boom!
boom! opens the battery, and jets of fire jump
down and scorch the trees under which we
fought and despaired.
The shattered old brigade has a chance to
breathe for the first time in three hours as We
form line Of battle behind the guns and lie
down. What grim, cool fellows those cannon
eers are! Every man is a perfect machine.
Bullets plash dust into their faces, but they
do not vince. Bullets sing over and around
them, but they do not dodge. There goes one
to the earth, shot through the head as he
sponged his gun. The machinery loses just
one heat-misses just one cog in the whael-
and then works away again as before.
Every gun is using short fuse shell. The
ground shakes and trembles-the roar shuts
out all sounds from battle line three miles
long and the shells go shrieking into the swamp
to cut trees short offto NOW great gaps in the
bushes-to hunt out and scatter and mangle
men until their corpSeS cannot be recognized
as human. You would think a tornado was
bowling through the forest, followed by bill
lows of lire, and yet men live through 1t-aye!
press forward to capture the battery! we can
hear their shouts as they form for a rush!
Now the shells are changed for grape and
canister, and the guns are served so fast that
all reports blend into one mighty roar The
shrek of shell is the wickedest sound in war,
but nothing makes the flesh crawl like the de-
moniac singing, purring, whistling grapeshot
and the serpentlike hiss of canister. Mems
ln md a. ant CIN tl,ra arrnh
off. Heads are torn from bodies and bodies
cut in two A round shot or she'll take two
men out OF the ranks as it crashes through.
Grape and canister NOV swath and pile
the dead on top of each other.
Through the smoke we see a swarm of men.
1t is not battle line, but mob OF men des-
perate enough to bathe their bayonets in the
flame OF the guns. The guns leap from the
ground almost as they are depressed on the foe
and shrieks and screams and shouts blend into
one awful and steady cry. Twenty men out at
on the battery are down, and the firing is in
terrupted. The foe accept it as sign of way
ering and come rushing on. They are not ten
feet away when the guns give them last shot.
That discharge picks living men off their feet,
and throws them into the swamp, a blackened
and bloody mass
Up now, as the enemy are among the guns!
There is silence of ten seconds, and then the
flash and roar of more than three thousand
muskets and rush forward with bayonets
For what? Neither on the right nor left nor
in front of us is living foe! There are corpses
around us which have been struck by three,
four and even six bullets, and nowhere on this
acre of ground is a wounded man! The wheels
of thetguns cannot move until the blockade of
dead is removed. Men cannot pass from cais-
son to gun without climbing over winIows of
dead. Every gun and wheel is smeared with
blood-every foot of grass has its horrible
stain.
Historians write of the glory of war. Burial
parties saw murder where historians saw glory.