The Atherstone, Nuneaton, and Warwickshire Times. — 1881-04-16 (Atherstone, Warwickshire, England)

TIIN DEER.  REALITIES OF WAR.  A popular writer thus describes a battle :—" We have been fighting at the edge of the woods. A moment ago the battery was a confused mob. We look again, and the six 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 boom! boom opens the battery, and jets of lire jump down and scorch the Omen trees under which we fought and struggled. 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, cool fellows those cannoneers are! Every man is a perfect machine. Bullets splash dust into their faces, but they do not wince. 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 wheel, and then works away again as before. Every gun is using a short fuse shell. The ground shakes and trembles, the roar shuts qv- all sound from n battle-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 recognised as human. You would think a tornado was howling through the forest, followed by billows of are, 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 i lie shells are changed for grape and canister, and the guns are fired so fast that all reports blend into one mighty roar. The shriek of the shell is the wickedest sound  in war, but nothing makes the flesh crawl like the demoniac singing, purring, whistling grape-shot, and the serpent-like hiss of canister. Men's ler and heads are torn from bodies, and bodies cut in two. A round shot of shell takes two men out of the rank as it crashes through. Grape and canister mow a swathe and pile the dead on top of each other. Through the smoke we see a swarm of men. It is not a battle-line, but a mob of men desperate enough to bathe their bayonets in the flaw) of the guns. That 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 on the battery are down, and the filing 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 a last shot. The discharge picks living men off their feet and throws them into the swamp, a blackened, bloody mass. Up now, as the enemy are among the guns ! There is a silence of ten seconds, and then the flash and roar of more than 3.000 muskets and a rush forward with bayonets. For what ! Neither on the right nor left, nor in front of us is a living foe ! There aro corpses 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 gnu cannot move until the blockade of dead is removed. Men cannot pass from caisson to gun without climbing over rows of dead. Every gun and wheel is smeared with blood ; every foot of grass has its horrible stain. Historians write of the glory of war. Burial parties saw murder, where historians saw glory."