Nevada County picayune., 1889-05-01
BRINGING UP THE GUNS.

IS oilc or llc HilCSI bljS or UcSCrlpIlNt
 writing in the English language. Tho
 sketch Host it's crcdit,' travelnl
 about, and the school boy finds that
 it was written by that bright thinker
 "Anonymous -
 Did you ever see a battery take
 position?
 It hasn't the thrill of a cavalry
 charge. nor the grimness of line of
 bayonets moving slowly and deter.
 mnedly on, but there is a 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,b box has been empticd once or more, and ohe-fourth of the brigade has melted away in dead and wounded and miss ing. Not a cheer is heard i'll 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 aud the enemy will pour through the gap.
 Here comes help!
 Down the crowded highways gal lops a battery withdrawn from some other position to save ours.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 farmer would not drive a wagon. through elumps Of bushes, over logs foot thick. every horse on the gallop, every rider lash ing his team and yelling the sight beyond us making us forget the foe in front. The guns jump two feet high as the heavy wheels strike T rock or log, but not horse slackens his pace. not q cannoneer loses his seal. Six guns. six caissons, sixty horses, eighty men, race for the brow of the hill as if he who should reach 1t first would be knighted
 A moment ago the battery was a confused mob. We looked again and the six guns are in position, the detached horses hurrying away, the ammunition chests open, and along our llne runs the commands:
 Give them one more yolley 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 de- spaired,
 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 cannoneers are. Every man is q 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. That machinery loses just one belt. misses just one cog m the wheels, and then works away again as before.
 Every gun is using short-fuse shell. The grounds shakes and trembles, the roar shuts out all sound from line three miles long, and the shells go shrieking into the swamp to cut trees short off, to mow 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 bil- 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 canister, and guns are fired so fast all reports blend into one mighty roar. The skriek of a shell is the wickedest sound in war, but makes the flesh crawl like the demonacal singing, purring, whistling grape shot and the serpent like hiss of canister.
 Mems legs and heads are torn from bodies and bodies cut in two. A round shot or shell takes two men out of the rank as it crashes through Grape and canister mow a swath and pile the dead on top of each other.
 Through the smoke we see swarm of men. 1t is not battle line, but a mob of men desperate enough to bathe their bayonets in the flame of the guns. The guns leap from the ground almost as 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 and come rushing on. They are not ten feet away when the guns give them the last shot. The discharge picks living men off their feet and throws them into the swamp blackened, bloody mass. Up, now, as the enemy are among the guns. There is silence of ten seconds and then the flash and the roar of more than 5000 muskets and rush forward with bayonets. For what! Neither on the right nor left nor in front of us is living foe There are corpses around us whcih have been struck by three, four and even six bullets, and nowhere on this acre of ground is wounded man. The wheels of the guns can not move until the blockade of the