Close by, in the corner of
a fence, was a group of men standing around a handsome young
officer, whose foot had been blown to pieces by a torpedo planted
in the road. He was waiting for a surgeon to amputate his leg, and
told me that he was riding along with the rest of his brigade-staff
of the Seventeenth Corps, when a torpedo trodden on by his horse
had exploded, killing the horse and literally blowing off all the
flesh from one of his legs. I saw the terrible wound, and made
full inquiry into the facts. There had been no resistance at that
point, nothing to give warning of danger, and the rebels had
planted eight-inch shells in the road, with friction-matches to
explode them by being trodden on. This was not war, but murder,
and it made me very angry. I immediately ordered a lot of rebel
prisoners to be brought from the provost-guard, armed with picks
and spades, and made them march in close order along the road, so
as to explode their own torpedoes, or to discover and dig them up.
They begged hard, but I reiterated the order, and could hardly help
laughing at their stepping so gingerly along the road, where it was
supposed sunken torpedoes might explode at each step, but they
found no other torpedoes till near Fort McAllister.
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