tructive at
that close range that it stopped Cheatham's men who then fell back and
commenced building breastworks. In calling them Cheatham's men, did the
captain wish to insinuate that Cheatham's whole corps was charging on
the regiment? He uses the words "withering," "destructive," and "that
close range," in a way to raise the inference that the contact was very
close. The actual distance was shrapnel-shell range, for the battery
stopped Cleburne with those missiles before he had crossed the little
stream more than 1,000 yards away, so that instead of a cool regiment of
exceptional staying qualities delivering a destructive fire at very
close range, as pictured by the captain, the truth discloses a highly
excited, not to say a badly scared regiment, wasting ammunition at too
long range to do any damage. That this was the truth is proved by the
very significant fact, not deemed worthy of mention in either of the
accounts quoted, that the regiment did not lose a single man killed or
wounded; not one, and it was not protected by breastworks. With
impressive mystery the captain describes the regiment as what was left
of it after the way it had been cut up in the Atlantic campaign, with
the same artful vagueness used in the matter of the range, seeking to
create the inference that the battle losses of the regiment had been
very extraordinary. Again, to be specific, the regiment lost in its
three years' term of service two officers and thirty-seven men killed or
died of wounds, less than one-third the average loss of the six
regiments composing Bradley's brigade, and it stands 109th among the
infantry regiments of its State in the number of its battle losses, or,
excepting six regiments that spent most of their time in garrison duty,
at the bottom of the list of all three years' regiments sent from the
State. It would appear that the 103d Ohio had become pretty well imbued
with the spirit characteristic of the headquarters with which it was
associated, to claim credit in an inverse ratio to services rendered.

When Cleburne changed direction his left swung in so close to the pike
that the two guns and the 36th Illinois were driven away and Cleburne
could then have extended his left across the pike without meeting with
any further opposition.

Lowrey and Govan made the change in line of battle while Granbury faced
to the right and followed their movement in column of fours. Afterwards
Granbury about faced, and moving back s