The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1896-08-05
SOLDIERS BUDGET,
A Graphic Description of a Battle
With Big Guns.

Did you ever see battery take posi-
ton?
1t hasn't the thrill of cavalry charge.
nor the grimness of line of bayonets
moving slowly and determinediy 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 box has
been emptied once or more, and one
fourth of the brigade 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 90 to pieces and
the enemy will pour through the gap.
Here comes help.
Down crowded highway 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battery withdrawn from some other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
beyond us. Over dry bitches where
farmer would not drive wagon,
through clumps of bushes, over logs
foot thick, every horse on the gallop,
every rider lashing his team aud yell
ing, the sight behind us made US forget
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 cannoneer loses his
seat. Six guns, six caissons, 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 con-
fused mob. We looked again and the
Fix guns are in position, the detached
horses hurrying away, the ammunition
chests open, and along our line runs
| the command:
" Give them one more volley and fall
back to support the guns" We have
scarcely obeyed when booml booml
opens the battery, and jets of fire jump
down and scorch the 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
cannoneers are. Every man is per-
feet 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
spouged 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 trembes, the
roar shuts out all sound from line
three miles long, and the shells go
| Oh -; ;,,to no tr o,,t f,aa
short off, TO NOW great gaps in the
bushes, hunt out and shatter and man.
gle men until their corpses cannot be
recognized as human. You would
think tornado was bowling through
the forest, followed by pillows of fire,
and yet men live through it, aye, press
forward to capture the battery. We can
hear their shouts as they form for 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 shrek of shell is the wickedest
sound in war, but nothing makes the
flesh crawl like the demoniacal singing,
purring, whistling grape shot and the
serpent-like hiss of canister.
Mems heads and legs are torn from
bodies and bodies cut in two. A round
shot or shell takes two men out of the
ranks as it crashes through. Grape and
canister NOW 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
mob of men desperate enough to battle
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 ac-
cept 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, backened, bloody mass.
Up, now, as the enemy are among
the guns. There is a 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 that have been
struck by three, four and even six bull
lets, and nowhere on this acre of
ground is "A wounded man. The wheels
of the guns cannot move until the
blockade of dead is removed. Men
cannot pass from caisson to gun with
out climbing over windows of dead.
Every gun and wheel is smeared with
blood; every foot of grass has its hor-
rible stain.
Historians write the glory of war.
Burial parties saw murder where his
toriaus saw glory.-Chicago Tribune.