Iowa County democrat. [volume] (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1877-1938, 1889-12-27
(Tobe continued. J
WHAT A REAL BATTLE Is.
Little Opportunity for Display of HEROES
or Poetic Glory-The Madness of Unor-
ganized Retreat.
United Service Review.

Little Opportunity for Display of Heroics
Poetic Glory-The MADNESS of Unor-
ganiZed Retreat.
United Service Review
A battle does not consist. as many
imagine, In a grand advance of victorious
lines of attack, sweeping everythin. be-
fore them, or ON the helter-skelter flight of
the unfortunate defeated The historian
must so present it in his descriptions, the
artist in his paintings. Even the writer
of an official account must limit himself to
the presentation of such moments as de-
mand special treatment, or to such cpl
sodes as involve important and instructive
tactical movements.
All those events which are less striking,
which pass more quietly, but which new
ertheless, contribute to II final result, can
not be reproduced without too much ex-
pansion. These incidents, which no ac-
count of the battle, official or unofficial,
takes any note of-the thousand and one
events observed only by the participants,
the innumerable cases in which the direc-
ton and control of affairs glide out of the
hands of the officers these are the little
drops of water that make the mighty
ocean of battle and determine the victory
or defeat.
The opening of the day of great battle is
generally very prosaic. After an uncom-
Portable night passed In a wet or cold biv-
ouac, where the men wrapped IN their
Oyercoats, have been gathered shivering
about the campfire, trying i'll vain to get
warm; after the simplest of breakfasts, of
which the drought of poor, cold water was
the only palatable constituent, the soldier
goes forth to battle There he may never
see the enemy; indeed, unusually long
halts, uncomfortable standing still under
shrapnel fire, or apparently useless camp
ing in mud and under small-arm fire await
him. The feeling of being exposed to the
invisible missiles of the enemy. mingled
with the uncertainty as to what is going
on to the right and left, often produces in
the best of troops great depression and a
falling off in offensive st angth, even when
the battle in general is making splendid
progress. In such moments tactics are ex-
hausted, and it is only question of grit
and sense of duty,
Sheridan tells us: Indeed, the battle
of Chicamauga was something like that of
Stone River, victory resting with the SIDE
that had the grit to defer the longest its
REIMBURSEMENT from the field" Still
more pressing is the appeal to the morale
of the troops when an unfortunate termi-
nation of the battle forces an army which
has done its duty to retire. Exhausted to
its last gasp, its resistance, pushed to the
highest pitch, gives way, and with fright
full reaction the resistless mass plungeS to
the rear. This is to-day no longer an or
ganized retreat from position to position,
as our predecessors taught and practiced,
but an uncomfortable current, like the
mountain torrent, which, fraught with
havoc and disaster overfows its banks
Woe to the land that can oppose no other
dams to this stream than strategy, tactics
and the instruction of the troops. These
will be washed away like sand heaps by the
roaring waters.