The Arkansaw traveler., 1889-04-13
BRINGING UP THE GUNS.

The following sketch written by NJ. Quad and first published in the Detroit Free Press several years ago, is one of the finest bits of descriptive its credit" travelling about and the schoolboy finds that it was written by that bright thinker, "AnonymOus"
 Did you ever sec battery take position?
 It 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 it that makes old veterans rise in their sad dies 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 once more the line will go to pieces and the enemy will pour through the gap.
 Here comes help
 Down the crowded highways gallops a battery withdrawn from some other position to save ours The field fence is scattered while you could count thirty, and the guns rush for the hills behind us Over dry ditches where a farmer would not drive a wagon, through clumps of bushes, over logs a foot thick, every horse the gallop, every rider lash ing his team and yelling, the sight beyond mak- ing usforget the foe in front. The guns jump two feet high as the heavy wheels strike rock or log but not horse slackens his pace not a cannoneer loses his seat Six guns, six caissOns sixty horses
 
 who should reach it first would be knighted.
 moment ago the battery was a confused mob We looked again and the six guns are in position the detached horses hurrying away, the smmuni- tion chests open and along our line runs the com- mand:
 "Give them one more voley and fall back to SUD- port 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 a chance to breathe for the first time in three hours as we form line and lie down. What grim, cool fellows those can- noneers are. Every man is perfect machine. Bull lets splash dust in 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 gun. That machinery loses just one belt, misses just one cog in the wheels, and then works away again as before.
 Every gun is using shOrt-fuse shell. The ground shakes and trembles, the shuts out all sound from line three miles long, and the shells go shrieking into the swamp to cut trees short of to now great gaps in the bushes, hunt out and shat ter and mangle men until their corpses cannot be recognized as human. You would think tornado was bowling through the forest followed by bill lows of fire, and yet men live through it, aye, press forward to capture the battery We can hear their shouts as they form the rush.
 Now the shells are changed for grape and canis- ter, and guns fired fast all reports blend into mighty roar. The shriek of a shell is the wick edest sound in war, but nothing makes the flesh crawl like the demoniacal singing, purring, whis- tlng grape shot and the serpent-like hiss of can- ister
 Mems legs and heads are torn from bodies and bodies cut in two. round shot or shell takes two men out of the rank as it crashes through. Grape and canister mow swath and pile the dead on top of each other.
 Through the smoke we see a swarm of men. 1t is not battle line, but a mob of men desperate enough to bathe their bayonets in the flame of