What would we not have
given to join them in their brave, hopeless task! But to lie inglorious
beneath showers of shrapnel darting divergent from the unassailable
sky--meekly to be blown out of life by level gusts of grape--to clench our
teeth and shrink helpless before big shot pushing noisily through the
consenting air--this was horrible! "Lie down, there!" a captain would
shout, and then get up himself to see that his order was obeyed. "Captain,
take cover, sir!" the lieutenant-colonel would shriek, pacing up and down
in the most exposed position that he could find.
O those cursed guns!--not the enemy's, but our own. Had it not been for
them, we might have died like men. They must be supported, forsooth, the
feeble, boasting bullies! It was impossible to conceive that these pieces
were doing the enemy as excellent a mischief as his were doing us; they
seemed to raise their "cloud by day" solely to direct aright the streaming
procession of Confederate missiles. They no longer inspired confidence,
but begot apprehension; and it was with grim satisfaction that I saw the
carriage of one and another smashed into matchwood by a whooping shot and
bundled out of the line.
X
The dense forests wholly or partly in which were fought so many battles of
the Civil War, lay upon the earth in each autumn a thick deposit of dead
leaves and stems, the decay of which forms a soil of surprising depth and
richness. In dry weather the upper stratum is as inflammable as tinder.
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