The Northern Pacific farmer., 1885-09-17
A Good War Story.

whole OF the wal, beng at nrSG IN neld
service and then shut up in mortar
batteries at different places. When
Petersburg was invested he, asergeant,
and his brother, lieutenant, were in
mortar battery situated near the old
Blanford cemetery, his brother being
in charge. Their principal duty was to
fire at the federal batteries and draw
their fire. When the confederates
made a demonstration they had
bomb-proofs to run into, of course;
but one can't stay in a bo1nb-proof
and fire the mortar at the same time,
and, as might be supposed, they be-
came more familiar with pyrotechnic
displays than they cared for. There
was one Union battery in particular
that always gave them trouble when
ever they fired at it. 1t was knownas
the "railroad-iron' battery, and We
very heavily armed Moreover,
gunners therein had the exact range
the Blandford battery, which wa
twice too large, and it rarely require,
more than ten minutes to run the
confederates into their bomb-proof. =
1t was in this Blandford battery that
one of the most curious and at t.
time mysterious events of the war
cured.
Zone night" says Sergt. Egglest,
eve we're working there in the batter
firing away in different directions, b,
taking care to keep our hands off tn,
railroad iron battery, and watching -
the shells as they flew around, occa-
sionally jumping into the bomb proof
when one would light III our place, whe
two fne-looking men, whom we all too
for general officers, suddenly wake
into the works. We could not t..
their exact rank, because they wor
| white waistcoats and coats, but they
looked as though they were rank Off :
GERS. They walked up to George, ad-
dressed him as lieutenant, as though
| they knew him, and said that they ha
come out to see some mortar tirir
and hoped that he would accommod;
them if it was not inconvenie'
George replied that he would be b"
to show them anything in that lin
turning to me, said, Touch
railroad-iron battery, joe Y
wished that those chaps had st;
their tents; but | though that it '.
not be very long before they woul,.
glad to get into the bomb-proof, ana
that the rest ofus could go III then also.
So commenced to touch up that rail-
road-iron place. In less than three
minutes we had walked up thehornet's
nest, and they were raining shells into
us at a terrific rate
''Those fellows over there seemed to
know hat the occasion wasan unusual
one, and they were determined to give
us all THAT we could ask for The shells
were dropped into our battery like
hailstones, bursting all around us, and
rolling around like footballs; but
there stood those two officers and
George, leaning up against a piece of
timber and talking as coolly as Il they
were leaning on a fence u thousand
miles away from Il piece of artillery.
A shell came long and cut that piece
of timber in two, and scattered splin-
ters all over the place; but all that tl,ev
did was to lean aga inst fresh place and
20 on talking. ! don't believe that
either one Of the three even winked. [
came to the conclusion that they liked
that thing better than did, and told
one OF the gunners to shift his gun
pretty soon l shifted another, and the
fire gradually died down. knew that
George would stand there and be shot
at till the crack of doom before he
would suggest anything about bomb
proofs, and the other chaps didn't
want to say anything unless he did.
Well, they talked on for ten or fifteen
minutes after the fire died down, and
"a
to the skirnish line and see what was
going on there, if he would show them
the way. He told them to go out of
the battery on a certain side and follow
the path; they could not miss the skir-
mish. They left after expressing their
thanks for our kindness, but they did
not say what their names were, and
George was too polite to ask them.
"Now the funny part of it comes in.
The next day George tried to find out
who they were, but none of our officers
had been out there. The fact is, I
don't believe that any OF our officers
had any white clothes to wear, and if
George had only thought a minute hs
might have known that none of them
would be roaming around at night to
see mortar firing; they could stay in
camp and get enough of that. But he
could not hnd out who those men
were, though every effort was made,
as the thing began to get mysterious
About two years ago, or longer,
George was on an Ohio river steam
boat talking to a man in the saloon,
when a gentleman came up and said:
Are you not the lieutenant who was
in command of a mortar battery near
Blandford cemetery at Petersburg9'
Yes, he answered. 'And don't YOU
remember two officers coming to your
battery one ght and saying that they
had come out to see some mortar-tir-
ing?' Yes, and have been looking
tor them ever since
"'Well, l am one of them, and my
companion was Gen., also of the
Union army 4 am very glad to meet
YOU said Lieut.. Eggleston, but if l
had known who you were at that time
you would not be talking to me now
so I knew then, was the reply. we
did start out to see mortar firing, just
as told you; and we also intended to
80 on to the skirmish line. But wegot
into the wrong battery. You remem-
Der that our skirmish line ran up to
what was q marsh when we first got to
Petersburg, and that it really pointed
behind your line. Well, we got to the
end of our line at the marsh, but it had
dried up, and after we had wandered
around there for while, confused by
the shells flying in different directions,
we suddenly found ourselves right at
your battery. We sat there in the
ditch for almost two hours, wondering
what we could do; we could hear
every word that your men said
Had we been in uniform we should
have gone right in and surrendered;
but we knew that our white clothes
would be taken as disguises, and that
we would have been arrested as spies.
'Cndoubtedly,' said Lieut.. E. $50 we
concluded to 90 in and nretand that