Public ledger. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1865-1893, 1881-02-09
SUPPORTING II GUNS.
scene On "A NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS.
and GlOry--Or is il Plain
Murder?
San Francisco Argonaut. .


San Francisco Argonaut.J
Did you ever see a battery take po-
sition?
1t hasn't the thrill of a cavalry
charge, nor the grimness of a line of
bayonets moving slowly and deter
minedly on but there is a 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 9mptied once and more, and
one.fourth of the brigade has melted
away in dead and wounded and miss
ing. Not a cheer is heard in the
whole brigade. We know that we are
being driven foot ny foot, and that
when we break back once more the
line will go to pieces. and the enemy
will break through the gap.
Here comes helpl
Down the crowded highway gallops
a battery, Withdrawn from some other
position to save ours. The field fence
is scattered while you count thirty,
aud the guns rush for the hills behind
us. Six horses to a piece three riders
to a guu. 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, ev-
cry 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 a horse
slackens his pace, not a %cannOneer
loses his seat. Six guns, six caissons,
sixty horses, eighty men race for the
brow of the hill as ii he who reached
it first would be knighted.
A moment ago the battery was a
confused mob. We look again and
the six guns are in position, the de
tached horses hurrying away, the am
munition chests open, and along our
line runs the command: Give them
one more volley, and fall back to sup
port the guns" We have scarcely
Obeyed when boom, boom, opens the
battery, and jets ofire jump down and
scorch the green grass 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 a line and lie
down. What grim, cool fellows those
cannoneers arel Every man is a per-
feet machine. Bullets splash dust
into their faces, but they do not vince.
Bullets sing over and around-they
do not dodge. There goes one to the
earth, shot through the head as he
sponged his gup. 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 a bat
tie line three miles long, and the
shells 90 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 cornses
cannot be recognized as human. You
would think a tornado was bowling
through the forest, followed by bill
lowed fire, and yet men live through
it-aye, press forward to capture the
battery. We can hear their shouts as
they form for the rush.
Now the shells are changed for
grape and canister, and the guns are
fred so fast that all reports blend in
one mighty roar. The shrek OF a
shell is tho wickedest sound in war.
but no hing makes the flesh crawl
like the demoniac singing, purring,
whistling grape-shot, and the serpent
like hiss Of canister. Mems legs and
heads are torn from the bodies and
bodies cut in two. A round shot or
she'll takes two men out Of the rank as
it crashes through. Grape and CAMS
ter NOW a swath, aud pile the dead on
top of each other.
Through the smoke we see a swarm
o men. 1t is not a battle field, but a
mob of men desperate enough TO battle
their bayonets in the fame of guns.
The guns leap from the ground, al
most as they are depressed on the 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 uninterrupted. The
foe accept it as a sign OF wagering, and
come rushing on. They are not ten
feet away when the guns give them a
last shot. That discharge picks living
men off their feet, and throws
them into the swamp, a blackened,
bloody mass.
Up now, as the enemy are among
the gunsl There is a silence often sec
onds and then fash and roar more than
three thousand muskets and a rush
forward with bayonets. For WHAT
Neither on the right, nor left, nor in
the front Of US a living foe. There are
corpses around US which have been
struck bythree, four, and even six
bullets, and nowhere on this acre ofl
ground is a wounded man. The !
wheels Of the guns cannot move until
the blockade of dead is removed. Men
cannot pass from a %caissOn to a gun
without climbing over winrows 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 his
torians saw glory.