Morris tribune. [volume] (Morris, Minn.) 1880-2000, 1880-09-09
Supporting The Guns.

Did you ever see battery take pos
1t hasn't the thrill of cavalry charge
nor the grimness of line of bayonets
moving slowly and determinedly on,
but there is peculiar excitement about
1t that makes old veterans rise in their
saddles and cheer. .......
We have been fighting at the edge of
the woods. Every cartridge-b box has been
emptled once and more, and fourth of
the brigade has melted away in dead
and 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 helpl
Down the crowded highway gallops a
battery, withdrawn from some other pos
ition to save ours. The field fence is
scattered while you could count thirty,
and the guns rush for the hill behind us.
Six horses to a piece-threee riders to
each gun. Over dry bitches where a
farmer would not drive wagon, through
clumps of bushes, over logs foot thick,
every horse on the gallop, 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 Jog or rock, but
not horse slackens his pace, not q can
oneer loses his seat. Six guns, six cais-
sons, sixty horses, eighty men, race for
the brow Of the hill as if he who reached
1t first would be knighted.
A moment ago the battery was con-
fused 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 COM
mand: Give them one more volley and
tall back to support the gunsv' We
have scarcely obeyed when boom! boom
boom! opens the battery, and jets of fire
jump down and scorch the green trees
under which we fought
The shattered old brigade has 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 caHoneers are Every man
is 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 beat-misses just one cog III the
wheel and then works away again as be.
fore. ....s
Every gun is using short fuse shell.
cf hi 4ho
roar shuts out all sounds from battle
line three miles long, and the shell go
shrieklng into the swamp to cut trees
short off-to hunt out and shatter and
maagle men until their corpses cannot
be recognized as human. You would
think tornado was howling through the
forest, followed by billOws of fire, and
yet men live through lt-aye, press for
ward to capture the batteryl We can
hear their shouts as they form for a
rush.
Now thesshelIs are changed to grape
and canister, and the guns are served so
fast that all reports blend into one
mighty roar. The shrek OF a shell is
the wicked9st sound in war, but nothing
makes the flesh crawl like the demonlac
singing, purring, whistling grapeshot
and the serpent-like hiss, Of canister.
Mems legs and arms are not shot through
but torn off. Heads are torn from bod
les, and bodies cut into. A round shot
or shell takes two men out of the ranks
as it crashes through. Grape and can
lister NOV a swath and pile the dead on
top of each other. VI r~5-ts; sa'sRT
Through the smoke We see swarm ot
men desperate enough to bathe their
bayonets In the fame of the guns. The
guns leap from the ground almost as
they sre depressed ON the foe, and shrieks
and screams blend into one awful and
steady cry. Twenty men out on the bat
terry are down, and the firing Is inter-
rupted. The foe accepts 1t as sign of
wavering 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, blackened,
bloody mass.
Historians write of the glory OF war.
Burial parties saw murder where his
tonans saw glory. ad
.a