Mineral Point tribune. (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1869-1938, 1889-01-24
ABatteryin Hot Action.
A Battle Scene, Not as Historians
Write, But as Soldiers See 1t.
There is no Dress Parade In the Scenes
Bere Described.

One who has fought on many battle
field writes the following thrilling de-
scripticn of the work of battery of six
guns:
Did you ever see battery take posi-
toni
1t hasn't the thrill or cavalry charge,
nor the grimness of a line of 5ayonets
moving slowly and minedly 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 brig ade has melted away in dead and
wounded and missing. Not 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 highway gallops a
battery, withdrawn from some other po-
sition to save ours. The field fence is
scattered while you could uouut thirty,
and the guns rush for til . hills behind
rs. Six horses to piece-three riders
TO each gun. Over dry bitches where a
farmer would not drive a wagon, through
clumps of bushes, over logs a foot thick,
every horse on the gallop, every rider
lashing his team and yelling-the sight
behind MS making Us forget the foe in
front. The gus jump two feet high as
the heavy wheels strike a rock or log, but
not horse slsckens his pace, not can
noneer loses his seat Six guns, six can
mons, sixty horses, eighty men, race for
the brow of the hill as if he who should
reach it first would be knighted.
A moment ago the battery was a CON
fused mob. We look again and the six
guns are in position, the detached horses
are hurrying away, the ammunition chest
open, and aIong our line runs the com
maDd:
"Give them one more volley and fall
back to support the guns" We have
scarcely obeyed when boom! booml opens
the battery, and jets OF fire jump down
and scoreh the green trees under which
we fous ht 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, uool fellows these cannoneers
are Every man is a perfect machine
Bullets 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 beat, 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 trem bles, the roar
shuts ont all sounds from a line three
miles long, and the shells go shrieking
into the swamp to cut trees short off, 10
NOV great gaps in the bushes, hunt out
ana shstter and mangle men until their
eorpses cannot be recognized as human.
You would think a tornado was bowling
through the forest, followed by pillows OF
Ire, 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 canister, and guns are fired SO fast
that all reports blend into one mighty
roar. The shrek of a shell is the wicked
est sound in war, but nothing makes the
flesh crawl like the oemoniacal sing ing,
purring, whistling grape shot, and ser
pent like hiss OF canister.
Mems legs and heads are torn from
bodies and bodies cut in two. A round
short shell takes two men out of the rank
as it brushes through. Grape aud CAMS
ter NOV N swath and pile the dead on top
of easn other.
Through the smoke we see a swarm of
men. 1t is not battle line, but a mob
of men desperate enough to battle their
oayonets in the fame of tho guns. The
guns leap from the ground almost, "a
they are depressed on the foe, and shrieks
and screams and shouts blend into one
awful and steady cry. Twenty men out
of the battery are down, and the firing is
interrupted. The foe accept it as a sign
of wavering aud come rushing on. They
are not ten feet away when the guns give
them the last shot. That discharge picks
living men Of their feet and throws them
into the swamp blaekened bloody mass.
Up, now, as the enemy are among the
guus. There is q silence of ten seconds,
and then the fash and roar of 800 mus
Kets and rush forward With bsYonets.
| For what? Neither to the right nor left
is a living foe! There are oorpses around
us which have been struck by three, four,
and even six bullets, and nowhere ON this
| acre OF ground is a wounded man. The
wheels of the guns cannot move until the
blockade of the dead Is removed. Men
cauuut pass from caisson to gun without
passing over SiudroHs of dead. Every
gun aud wheel Is smeared with blood
every foot II grass has its horrible stain.
Historians write OF the glory of war.
Y al I'D OIL ar
iaus saw glory.
H. nutnntatn ~ rtnn Gnll-na mns.