Washington standard. [volume] (Olympia, Wash. Territory) 1860-1921, 1881-04-22
Some Of the Horrors of War.

Did you ever see battery take
position
It hasn't the thrill of cavalry
charge, nor the grimness of a line of
bayonets moving slowly and deter
minedly on; but there is peculiar
excitement about it that makes old
veterans rise in their saddles and
cheer.
We have been fighting at the
edge of the woods. Every cartridge
box has been emptied once or more,
and one-fourth of the brigade has
melted away in dead and wounded
and missing. Not a 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 60 to pieces,
and the enemy will break through
the gap.
Here comes help.
Down the crowded highway ga l.
lops battery, withdrawn from. some
other position to save ours. The
field fence is scattered while you
could count thirty, and the guns rush
for the hills behind us. Six horses
to piece-three riders to a gun.
Over dry bitches, where a farmer
would not drive his wagon, through
clumps of bushes, over logs a foot
thick, every horse on a gallop,
every rider lashing his team and
yelling-the sight behind US makes
us forget the foe in front. Tho guns
jump two feet high as the heavy
wheels strike log or rock, but not a
horse slackened his pace, not can
noneer losses his seat. Six guns,
six ca;ssons, sixty horses, eighty
men race for the brow of the hill as
if he who reached it first would be
knighted. A moment ago the bat
terry was q confused mob. We look
again, and the six guns are in posi-
ton, the detached horses hurrying
away, the ammunition chests open,
and along our line runs the COM
mand:
Give them one more vollsy and
fall back to support the guns"
We have scarcely pbeyed when
boom! boom! opens the battery, and
Jets Of fire jump down and scorch
the green 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 to
lie down. What grim, cool fellows
those cannoneers are!. Every man is
o perfect machine. Bullets sing over
and around; they do not dodge.
There goes one to the earth, shot
through the head as he sponged
his gun. That machinery loses just
one beat, misses Just one cog in the
wheel, 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 q
battle line three miles long, and the
shells go shrieking into the swamp
to cut trees short off, to NOW great
gaps in the bushes, to hunt out and
shatter and mangle men until their
corpses cannot be recognized as hu-
man. You would think tornado
was bowling through the forest, fol-
lowed by billows of fire, and yet men
live through it-aye, press forward
to capture the battery. We can
hear the shouts as they form for and
rush.
Now the shells are changed for
grape and canister, and the guns are
fired so fast that all reports blend
in one mighty roar. The shrek of a
shell is the wickedest sound in war,
but nothing makes the flesh crawl
lik the demoniac singing, purring,
whistling grape.shot and the SER
pent-like hiss of canister. Mems
heads and legs are torn from bodies
and bodies cut in two. A round
shot or shell takes two men out of
the ranks as i. crushes through.
Grape and canister NOW a swath,
and pile the dead on top of each
other.
Through the smoke we see swarm
of men. It is not battle line, but
a mob of men desperate enough to
bathe the Layonets in the fame of
guns. The guns leap from the
ground, almost as they ore depressed
on a foe, and shrieks, and screams,
and shouts blend into one awful and
steady cry. Twenty men on the
battery are down, and the firing is
interrupted. The foe accept it as a
sign of wavering, and come rushing
on. They are not ten feet away
when the guns give them a last shot.
That discharge picks living men of
their feet and throws them into the
swamp, blackened. 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 mus.
kets and a rush forward with bay
onets. For what! Neither on the