The Sedalia weekly bazoo. [volume] (Sedalia, Mo.) 187?-1904, 1881-07-26
SUPPORTING THE GUNS.
Scene on q Battle Field Carnage
and 0lory-Or il it Plain
Murder?

>an Francisco Argonaut.
Did you ever see battery take
position.
1t hasn't the thrill Of cavalry
charge, nor the grimness of line Of
bayonets moving slowly and deter
;. minedly on; but there is q 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 has
been emptied once more; 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 90 to
pieces, and the enemy will break
through the gap.
| Here comes help.
. Down the crowded highway gallops
Il battery withdrawn from some other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 U.s. Six horses to- piece
three riders to a gun. Over dry bitches
where farmer would not drive
his wagon, through clumps of bushes,
over logs foot thick, every horse on
the gallop, every rider flashing his
team and yelling sight behind
makes us forget the foe in front. The
guns jump two feet high as the heavy
wheels strike rock or log, but not
horse slackens his pace, nor can
noneer loses his seat. Six guns, six
caissons. sixty horses. eighty men,
race Tor the brow of the hill as if he
who reached it first would be knight
ed.
A moment ago the battery was
confused mob. We look again and
the six guns are in position, the de-
tached horses hurry away, the am
munitiOn chests open, and long our
lines runs the command: .'Give
them one more volley and fall back to
support the guns" We have scarcely
obeyed 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
chance to breathe for the first time in
three hours, rs We form line and lie
down. What grim, cool fellows those
cannoneers are! Every man is per-
feet machine. Bullets splash dust
into their faces, but they do not
vince. Bullets sing over and around;
they do not doge. There goes
one to the earth, shot through
the head rs 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 a bat
tie line three miles long, and the
shells 60 shrieking into the swamp to
cut the trees short of, to NOW great
gaps in the bushes, to hunt out and
shatter and mangle men until their
corpses cannot be recognized as human.
You would think a tornado was
bowling through the forest,
followed by pillows of fire, and yet
men live through it-aye, press for
ward 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 fired
so fast that all reports blend in one
mighty roar. The shrek of shell is
the wickedest sound in var, but moth
ing makes the flesh crawl like demo-
MAC singing, purring, whistling grape
shot and the serpent-like hiss Of can.
lister. Mems legs and heads are torn
from bodies cut in to. A round shot
or shell takes two men out of the
rank AZ it crashes through. Grape
and canister NOW a swath, and pile
the dead on top of each other.
Through the smoke we see q swarm
of men. 1t is not q battle-line but q
mob Of men desperate enough to bury
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 CIV. !
Twenty men on the battery are down,
and the firing is interrupted. The foe
accept it IS . sign of wavering, and
come rushing on. They are not
twenty feet away when the gums
give them q last shot. That discharge
picks living men of their feet and
throws them into the swamp. a black.