Part 10 (1/2)
Our rifled guns had just been firing at a Federal battery which we could see, up on the hill in front of us. Watching the effect of the shots, we saw one of the caissons blown up, and a gun disabled, and soon confusion. Somebody remarked, ”how easy it would be to take that battery, if any of our infantry were in reach.” Just then, we heard loud cheering, which sounded to us, to be up in the woods, on our left, where Hill's men were. Someone instantly cried out, ”There it goes now! Hill's men are going to take those guns.” We eagerly gathered at the works, some distance to the left of our guns, where we could see better, and stood gazing up at the edge of the field, expecting every moment to see Hill's troops burst out of the woods, and rush upon these guns. Our attention was absorbed, off there, when, all of a sudden, one of our fellows who happened to glance the other way, yelled, ”Good heavens!
look out on the right.” We all looked! There, pouring out of the woods, yelling like mad men, came the Federal infantry, fast as they could run, rus.h.i.+ng straight upon our line. The whole field was blue with them! When we first saw them, the foremost were already within one hundred yards of our works, and aiming for a point about two hundred yards to our right.
The breath was about knocked out of us by the suddenness of the surprise! It was not Hill's men charging _them_, but these fellows charging us,--whose yells we had heard, and here they were, right upon us! In two jumps we were at our gun. We had to turn it more to the right, and, with the first shot, blow away a light traverse, which was higher than the level of the gun, before we could bear on their columns.
We sent two or three canisters tearing through their ranks; the Texans were blazing away, but, they had got too close to be stopped. The next instant, they surged over our works like a great blue wave, and were inside.
=”Texas Will Never Forget Virginia”=
So sudden was the surprise that they bayonetted two of the Texan infantry, asleep upon the ground. Soon as they got over they turned, and began to sweep down the works, on the inside, upon our guns. As the Texans forced to retire streamed past our guns, leaving us all alone and unsupported to face the enemy, Lieutenant Anderson said, ”Men, the road is only a little way back of us; we must stay here, and stop these people, or the Army is cut in two. Run the guns back and open on them.
We can hold them until help comes.” We turned the guns round so as to command the approaching enemy, and chocked them with rails; several men s.n.a.t.c.hed up the pile of ammunition, and piled it down before the guns in their new place, then we opened, with double canister.
If ever two guns were worked for all they were worth, those were! I don't believe any two guns, in the same time, ever fired as many shots as those two ”Napoleons” did. We kept them just _spouting canister_!
Several times _three canisters_ were fired. Billy White, ”No. 2,” had only to reach down for them, and he would have loaded the guns _to the muzzle_ if ”No. 1” had given him time. The gun got so hot that, once, in jumping in to put in the friction primer, the back of my left hand touched it, and the skin was nearly taken off. The sponge was entirely worn off the rammer, so ”No. 1” stopped sponging out the gun, and only rammed shot home. We fired so fast that the powder did not have time to ignite in the gun. After firing the gun, ”No. 4” could hardly get the ”primer” in before the gun was loaded, and ready to fire again. So it went on! It was fast and furious work! And the bullets sounded like bees buzzing above our heads.
I felt a sharp pain, then a numbness in my right hand. I glanced at it, and saw that the back of it was cut open, and bleeding. I had to pull the lanyard with my left hand the rest of the fight. I supposed a bullet had done it, but was disgusted to see blood on one of the rails, which chocked our gun, and find that this rail had worked loose, and, when struck by the recoiling gun wheel, had flown round and struck my hand, and disabled it. So, it was not an ”honorable” wound, even though received in battle, as it was not done by a missile of the enemy.
Minute after minute, this hot work went on. The enemy, in coming over our works, and sweeping around, was thrown into disorder, so that they advanced on us in a confused ma.s.s.
In this ma.s.s our canister was doing deadly work, cutting lanes in every direction. Still on they came; getting slower in their advance as the canister constantly swept away the foremost men. The men in front began to flinch, they were within thirty yards of us,--firing wildly now. One good rus.h.!.+ and their bayonets would have silenced our guns! But they could not face that hail of death any longer; they could not make that rus.h.!.+ They began to give back from our muzzles.
At that moment, the Texans having rallied under the bank, forty yards to our right, and rear, came leaping like tigers upon their flank. The Texans were perfectly furious! It was the first time during the whole war that they had been forced from a position, under fire, and they were mad enough to eat those people up. A screaming yell burst out, a terrific outbreak of musketry, a rush, with the bayonets, and the inside of our work was clear of all, save the many dead, and wounded, and six hundred prisoners.
We ran our gun instantly back to its place, in the works, and got several shots into the flying mob, outside.
Then all was gone, and we were ready to drop in our tracks, with the exhausting work of the ten minutes that we had held the foe at bay.
General Gregg came up to our gun. With strong emotion he shook hands with each of us; he then took off his hat, and said, ”Boys, Texas will never forget Virginia for this! Your heroic stand saved the line, and enabled my brigade to rally, and redeem its honor. It is the first time it ever left a position under fire, and it was only forced out, now, by surprise, and overwhelming weight. But it could not have rallied except for you. G.o.d bless you!” This moment Bob Stiles came up at a run. He had left the guns a few moments before the attack came, and hearing our guns so busy came back.
When General Gregg told him in a very enthusiastic way what we had done, he just rushed up to each cannoneer, and hugged him with a grip, strong enough to crush in his ribs, and vowed he was going to resign his Adjutancy at once, and come back to the guns.
Pretty soon Major-General Field, commanding part of the line, came das.h.i.+ng up on his horse, and leaped off. He went round shaking hands with us, and saying very civil things. He was red hot! He had witnessed the whole thing from his position, on a hill near by. He said, ”When he saw the Federals roll over our works, and the Texans fall back, he was at his wits' end. He did not have a man to send us, and thought the line was hopelessly broken.” Then he saw us turn our two guns down inside the works. He said to his courier, ”It isn't possible these fellows will even attempt to keep their guns there. The enemy will be over them in two minutes.” But as our guns roared, and the enemy slowed down, he swung his hat, as the courier told us, and yelled out, ”By George, they will do it!” and clapping spurs into his horse he came tearing over to find the Texans in their line, all solid again. He said to us, ”Men, it was perfectly magnificent, and I have to say that your splendid stand saved the Army from disaster. If the line had been broken here I don't know what we should have done.”
Of course all this was very nice to hear. We tried to _look_ as if we were _used to this sort of thing all the time_. But, it was something for us, young chaps, to have our hands shaken nearly off, by enthusiastic admirers, in the shape of Brigadier and Major-Generals, especially as they were such heroic old veterans as Field and Gregg, and to have the breath hugged out of us by an old comrade. All this glory was only to be divided up among _nine men_, so there was a big share for each one. I must confess, it was very pleasant indeed to hear that men, who were judges, thought we had done a fine thing; and when in General Orders next day our little performance was mentioned to the whole army in most complimentary terms, and we knew that the folks at home would hear it, I am free to say, that we would _not_ have ”taken a penny for our thoughts.”
=Contrast in Losses and the Reasons Therefor=
The fight was over, just about as dusk was closing in. In this, and the fight at five o'clock, the enemy lost about six thousand men, killed and wounded. In the a.s.saults, at _ten_, _eleven_ and at _three_ o'clock, they certainly lost between two and three thousand in killed and wounded, so this day's work cost them about seven or eight thousand in killed and wounded, besides prisoners.
Our loss was very small. On our immediate part of the line, almost nothing. In the battery, we had one man wounded at five o'clock. In this furious close up fight with infantry, with the awful mauling our guns gave them, strange to say, we had not a man touched. The only blood shed that day, at the ”4th” gun, was caused by that rail striking my hand.
And our battle line was just as it was, in the morning, save for the hecatomb of dead and dying in front of it, and six hundred prisoners we held inside.
About these prisoners: Numbers of these men were drunk, and officers too. One Colonel was so drunk that he did not know he was captured, or what had happened. The explanation of this fact, I do not profess to know, but _this_ was what _the men themselves told us_, ”That before they charged, heavy rations of whiskey were issued, and the men made to drink it. I know that indignant denial has been made of this charge, that the Federal soldiers were _made drunk_ to send them in, but _this_ I do _certainly know_, as an eye witness, and hundreds of our men know it too, that here, on the Spottsylvania line, and at Cold Harbor, and other times in this campaign, we captured numbers of the men, a.s.saulting our lines, who were very drunk, and said they were made to drink. And this fact is one reason for the carnage among them, and the light loss they inflicted upon us. It made their men shoot wildly, and the moment our men saw this, they could, with the cooler aim, send death into their ranks. These hundreds of men going, _drunk_, to face death was a horrible sight; it is a horrible thought, but _it was a fact_.
=Why Captain Hunter Failed to Rally His Men=
In the quiet time, just before that sudden rush which swept over the works, Captain Hunter, of the Texans, was frying some pieces of fat bacon in a frying pan, over a little fire just by our gun. In a flash, the enemy was over the work, and we were in the thick of battle, and confusion. The Captain glanced from his frying bacon, to see his company falling back from the works, and the enemy pouring over. The sudden sight instantly drove him wild with excitement! He utterly forgot what he was doing. With a loud yell, he swung that frying pan round and round his head,--the hot grease flying in all directions,--and rushed to his men, and tried to rally them. (Having _lost the meat_, he _failed_! With a frying pan full of meat he could have rallied the regiment!) Back he fell with the brigade, and disappeared under the hill.
When the rallied Brigade came whooping back upon the enemy, ten minutes after, who should be in front tearing up the hill, leading the charge, but the gallant Captain, yelling like everything, and still waving that frying pan, to cheer on his men. More gallant charge was never led, with gleaming sword, than was this, led with that Texas frying pan.
At the time we were getting our guns around to fire upon the enemy inside the works, as the retiring Texans were falling back past us, Dr.
Carter stepped quickly out, and in his courteous manner, called out to them, ”Gentlemen, dear gentlemen, I hope that you are not running.” A pa.s.sing infantryman, a gaunt, unwashed, ragged chap, replied, ”Never you mind, old fellow! We are just dropping back to get to 'em.” ”I beg your pardon,” retorted the Doctor, ”but if you want to _get to them_, you ought to _turn round_; they are not the way you are going.” They pa.s.sed on, and the fight took place. When it was over we noticed that the Doctor was very much vexed about something. We asked what was the matter? He said, ”Never mind!” We insisted on his saying what disturbed him so. At last, he said ”Well, I don't see why, because men are in the army, they should not observe the amenities customary among gentlemen.”
”Well,” we said, ”that is all right; but why do you say it?” ”Why!” he warmly said; ”did you hear that dirty, ragged infantryman call me an old fellow? A most disrespectful way to address a gentleman!”