HOW WE GOT A SHELLING.
"Pack up!" "Fall in!" All is stir and excitement in the camp. The
bugles are blowing "boots and saddles" for the cavalry camped above
us on the hill; we drummer-boys are beating the "long roll" and
"assembly" for the regiment; mounted orderlies are galloping along
the hillside with great yellow envelopes stuck in their belts; and
the men fall out of their miserable winter-quarters, with shouts
and cheers that make the hills about Falmouth ring again. For the
winter is past; the sweet breath of spring comes balmily up from
the south, and the whole army is on the move,--whither?
"Say, Captain, tell us where are we going?" But the captain doesn't
know, nor even the colonel,--nobody knows. We are raw troops yet,
and have not learned that soldiers never ask questions about
orders.
So, fall in there, all together, and forward! And we ten little
drummer-boys beat gayly enough "The Girl I left behind me," as the
line sweeps over the hills, through the woods, and on down to the
river's edge.
And soon here we are, on the Rappahannock, three miles below
Fredericksburg. We can see, as we emerge from the woods, away over
the river, the long line of earthworks thrown up by the enemy,
and small dark specks moving about along the field, in the far,
dim distance, which we know to be officers, or perhaps cavalry
pickets. We can see, too, our own first division laying down the
pontoon-bridge, on which, according to a rumor that is spreading
among us, we are to cross the river and charge the enemy's works.
Here is an old army letter lying before me, written on my drum-head
in lead pencil, in that stretch of meadow by the river, where I
heard my first shell scream and shriek:--
"NEAR RAPPAHANNOCK RIVER, Apr. 28th.
"DEAR FATHER,--We have moved to the river, and are just going
into battle. I am well, and so are the boys.--Your affect. son,
"HARRY."
But we do not go into battle this day, nor next day, nor at all
at this point; for we are making only a "feint," though we do not
know it now, to attract the attention of the enemy from the main
movement of the army at Chancellorsville, some twenty-five or
thirty miles farther up the river. The men are in good spirits and
all ready for the fray; but as the day wears on without further
developments, arms are stacked, and we begin to roam about the
hills. Some are writing letters home, some sleeping, some even
fishing in a little rivulet that runs by us, when, toward three
o'clock in the afternoon, and all of a sudden, the enemy opens fire
on us with a salute of three shells fired in rapid succession, not
quite into our ranks, but a little to the left of us. And see!
over there where the 'Forty-third lies, to our left, come three
_stretchers_, and you can see deep crimson stains on the canvas
as they go by us on a lively trot to the rear; for "the ball is
opening, boys," and we are under fire for the first time.
I wish I could convey to my readers some faint idea of the noise
made by a shell as it flies shrieking and screaming through
the air, and of that peculiar _whirring_ sound made by the
pieces after the shell has burst overhead or by your side. So
loud, high-pitched, shrill, and terrible is the sound, that one
unaccustomed to it would think at first that the very heavens were
being torn down about his ears!
How often I have laughed and laughed at myself when thinking of
that first shelling we got there by the river! For up to that time
I had had a very poor, old-fashioned idea of what a shell was like,
having derived it probably from accounts of sieges in the Mexican
war.
I had thought a shell was a hollow ball of iron, filled with
powder and furnished with a fuse, and that they threw it over
into your ranks, and there it lay, hissing and spitting, till the
fire reached the powder, and the shell burst and killed a dozen
men or so; that is, if some venturesome fellow didn't run up and
stamp the fire off the fuse before the miserable thing went off!
Of a _conical_ shell, shaped like a minie-ball, with ridges on
the outside to fit the grooves of a rifled cannon, and exploding
by a percussion-cap at the pointed end, I had no idea in the
world. But that was the sort of thing they were firing at us
now,--Hur-r-r--bang! Hur-r-r--bang!
Throwing myself flat on my face while that terrible shriek is
in the air, I cling closer to the ground while I hear that low,
whirring sound near by, which I foolishly imagine to be the sound
of a burning fuse, but which, on raising my head and looking up and
around, I find is the sound of pieces of exploded shells flying
through the air about our heads! The enemy has excellent range of
us, and gives it to us hot and fast, and we fall in line and take
it as best we may, and without the pleasure of replying, for the
enemy's batteries are a full mile and a half away, and no Enfield
rifle can reach half so far.
"Colonel, move your regiment a little to the right, so as to get
under cover of yonder bank." It is soon done; and there, seated on
a bank about twenty feet high, with our backs to the enemy, we let
them blaze away, for it is not likely they can tumble a shell down
at an angle of forty-five degrees.
And now, see! Just to the rear of us, and therefore in full
view as we are sitting, is a battery of our own coming up into
position at full gallop,--a grand sight indeed! The officers with
swords flashing in the evening sunlight, the bugles clanging out
the orders, the carriages unlimbered, and the guns run up into
position; and now, that ever beautiful drill of the artillery in
action, steady and regular as the stroke of machinery! How swiftly
the man that handles the swab has prepared his piece, while the
runners have meanwhile brought up the little red bag of powder and
the long conical shell from the caisson in the rear! How swiftly
they are rammed home! The lieutenant sights his piece, the man with
the lanyard with a sudden jerk fires the cap, the gun leaps five
feet to the rear with the recoil, and out of the cannon's throat,
in a cloud of smoke, rushes the shell, shrieking out its message of
death into the lines a mile and a half away, while our boys rend
the air with wild hurrahs, for the enemy's fire is answered!
Now ensues an artillery duel that keeps the air all quivering
and quaking about our ears for an hour and a half, and it is all
the more exciting that we can see the beautiful drill of the
batteries beside us, with that steady swabbing and ramming, running
and sighting, and bang! bang! bang! The mystery is how in the world
they can load and fire so fast.
"Boys, what are you trying to do?"
[Illustration: GENERAL DOUBLEDAY DISMOUNTS AND SIGHTS THE GUN.]
It is Major-General Abner Doubleday, our division-commander, who
reins in his horse and asks the question. He is a fine-looking
officer, and is greatly beloved by the boys. He rides his horse
beautifully, and is said to be one of the finest artillerists in
the service, as he may well be, for it was his hand that fired the
first gun on the Union side from the walls of Fort Sumter.
"Why, General, we are trying to put a shell through that stone barn
over there; it's full of sharpshooters."
"Hold a moment!" and the general dismounts and sights the gun.
"Try that elevation once, sergeant," he says; and the shell
goes crashing through the barn a mile and a half away, and the
sharpshooters come pouring out of it like bees out of a hive. "Let
them have it so, boys." And the general has mounted, and rides,
laughing, away along the line.
Meanwhile, something is transpiring immediately before our eyes
that amuses us greatly. Not more than twenty yards away from us
is another high bank, corresponding exactly with the one we are
occupying, and running parallel with it, the two hills inclosing a
little ravine some twenty or thirty yards in width.
This second high bank, the nearer one, you must remember, faces the
enemy's fire. The water has worn out of the soft sand-rock a sort
of cave, in which Darkie Bill, our company cook, took refuge at
the crack of the first shell. And there, crouching in the narrow
recess of the rock, we can see him shivering with affright. Every
now and then, when there is a lull in the firing, he comes to the
wide-open door of his house, intent upon flight, and, rolling up
the great whites of his eyes, is about to step out and run, when
Hur-r-r--bang--crack! goes the shell, and poor scared Darkie Bill
dives into his cave again head-first, like a frog into a pond.
After repeated attempts to run and repeated frog-leaps backward,
the poor fellow takes heart and cuts for the woods, pursued by
the laughter and shouts of the regiment, for which he cares far
less, however, than for that terrible shriek in the air, which, he
afterward told us, "was a-sayin' all de time, 'Where's dat nigger!
Where's dat nigger! Where's dat nigger!'"
As nightfall comes on, the firing ceases. Word is passed around
that under cover of night we are to cross the pontoons and charge
the enemy's works; but we sleep soundly all night on our arms, and
are awaked only by the first streaks of light in the morning sky.
We have orders to move. A staff-officer is delivering orders to
our colonel, who is surrounded by his staff. They press in toward
the messenger, standing immediately below me as I sit on the bank,
when the enemy gives us a morning salute, and the shell comes
ricochetting over the hill and tumbles into a mud-puddle about
which the group is gathered; the mounted officers crouch in their
saddles and spur hastily away, the foot officers throw themselves
flat on their faces into the mud; the drummer-boy is bespattered
with mud and dirt; but fortunately the shell does not explode, or
my readers would never have heard how we got our first shelling.
And now, "Fall in, men!" and we are off on a double-quick in a
cloud of dust, amid the rattle of canteens and tin cups, and the
regular _flop, flop_ of cartridge-boxes and bayonet-scabbards,
pursued for two miles by the hot fire of the enemy's batteries, for
a long, hot, weary day's march to the extreme right of the army at
Chancellorsville.
[Illustration]