It was now three o'clock in the afternoon, and raining. For fifteen hours
we had been wet to the skin. Chilled, sleepy, hungry and
disappointed--profoundly disgusted with the inglorious part to which they
had been condemned--the men of my regiment did everything doggedly. The
spirit had gone quite out of them. Blue sheets of powder smoke, drifting
amongst the trees, settling against the hillsides and beaten into
nothingness by the falling rain, filled the air with their peculiar
pungent odor, but it no longer stimulated. For miles on either hand could
be heard the hoarse murmur of the battle, breaking out near by with
frightful distinctness, or sinking to a murmur in the distance; and the
one sound aroused no more attention than the other.
We had been placed again in rear of those guns, but even they and their
iron antagonists seemed to have tired of their feud, pounding away at one
another with amiable infrequency. The right of the regiment extended a
little beyond the field. On the prolongation of the line in that direction
were some regiments of another division, with one in reserve. A third of a
mile back lay the remnant of somebody's brigade looking to its wounds. The
line of forest bounding this end of the field stretched as straight as a
wall from the right of my regiment to Heaven knows what regiment of the
enemy. There suddenly appeared, marching down along this wall, not more
than two hundred yards in our front, a dozen files of gray-clad men with
rifles on the right shoulder. At an interval of fifty yards they were
followed by perhaps half as many more; and in fair supporting distance of
these stalked with confident mien a single man! There seemed to me
something indescribably ludicrous in the advance of this handful of men
upon an army, albeit with their left flank protected by a forest. It does
not so impress me now. They were the exposed flanks of three lines of
infantry, each half a mile in length. In a moment our gunners had grappled
with the nearest pieces, swung them half round, and were pouring streams
of canister into the invaded wood. The infantry rose in masses, springing
into line. Our threatened regiments stood like a wall, their loaded rifles
at "ready," their bayonets hanging quietly in the scabbards. The right
wing of my own regiment was thrown slightly backward to threaten the flank
of the assault. The battered brigade away to the rear pulled itself
together.
Then the storm burst. A great gray cloud seemed to spring out of the
forest into the faces of the waiting battalions. It was received with a
crash that made the very trees turn up their leaves. For one instant the
assailants paused above their dead, then struggled forward, their bayonets
glittering in the eyes that shone behind the smoke. One moment, and those
unmoved men in blue would be impaled. What were they about? Why did they
not fix bayonets? Were they stunned by their own volley? Their inaction
was maddening! Another tremendous crash!--the rear rank had fired!
Humanity, thank Heaven! is not made for this, and the shattered gray mass
drew back a score of paces, opening a feeble fire. Lead had scored its
old-time victory over steel; the heroic had broken its great heart against
the commonplace. There are those who say that it is sometimes otherwise.
All this had taken but a minute of time, and now the second Confederate
line swept down and poured in its fire. The line of blue staggered and
gave way; in those two terrific volleys it seemed to have quite poured out
its spirit. To this deadly work our reserve regiment now came up with a
run. It was surprising to see it spitting fire with never a sound, for
such was the infernal din that the ear could take in no more. This fearful
scene was enacted within fifty paces of our toes, but we were rooted to
the ground as if we had grown there. But now our commanding officer rode
from behind us to the front, waved his hand with the courteous gesture
that says _apres vous_, and with a barely audible cheer we sprang into the
fight. Again the smoking front of gray receded, and again, as the enemy's
third line emerged from its leafy covert, it pushed forward across the
piles of dead and wounded to threaten with protruded steel. Never was seen
so striking a proof of the paramount importance of numbers. Within an area
of three hundred yards by fifty there struggled for front places no fewer
than six regiments; and the accession of each, after the first collision,
had it not been immediately counterpoised, would have turned the scale.
As matters stood, we were now very evenly matched, and how long we might
have held out God only knows. But all at once something appeared to have
gone wrong with the enemy's left; our men had somewhere pierced his line.
A moment later his whole front gave way, and springing forward with fixed
bayonets we pushed him in utter confusion back to his original line. Here,
among the tents from which Grant's people had been expelled the day
before, our broken and disordered regiments inextricably intermingled, and
drunken with the wine of triumph, dashed confidently against a pair of
trim battalions, provoking a tempest of hissing lead that made us stagger
under its very weight. The sharp onset of another against our flank sent
us whirling back with fire at our heels and fresh foes in merciless
pursuit--who in their turn were broken upon the front of the invalided
brigade previously mentioned, which had moved up from the rear to assist
in this lively work.
As we rallied to reform behind our beloved guns and noted the ridiculous
brevity of our line--as we sank from sheer fatigue, and tried to moderate
the terrific thumping of our hearts--as we caught our breath to ask who
had seen such-and-such a comrade, and laughed hysterically at the
reply--there swept past us and over us into the open field a long regiment
with fixed bayonets and rifles on the right shoulder. Another followed,
and another; two--three--four! Heavens! where do all these men come from,
and why did they not come before? How grandly and confidently they go
sweeping on like long blue waves of ocean chasing one another to the cruel
rocks! Involuntarily we draw in our weary feet beneath us as we sit, ready
to spring up and interpose our breasts when these gallant lines shall come
back to us across the terrible field, and sift brokenly through among the
trees with spouting fires at their backs. We still our breathing to catch
the full grandeur of the volleys that are to tear them to shreds. Minute
after minute passes and the sound does not come. Then for the first time
we note that the silence of the whole region is not comparative, but
absolute. Have we become stone deaf? See; here comes a stretcher-bearer,
and there a surgeon! Good heavens! a chaplain!
The battle was indeed at an end.