could discern in the dim light. We
could see the light of their burning fuses, as they started out of their
guns, and could trace their flight toward us by that. Some of them would
strike the ground in front, and ricochet over us; some would crash into
our work, with a terrific _thud_, and some went screaming over our
heads,--very close, too, and went on to the rear to look after our Right
Section guns, which were still by that farmhouse, where we had left
them, the evening before. They knocked down several of the shelter tents
our boys were sleeping under, and several of our fellows, there, had the
narrowest kind of an escape. One shell "caromed" over three of the men,
who were sleeping side by side, touching the very blanket that was over
them. The Right Section boys needed no reveille that morning to get them
out! They tumbled up with great promptness and moved round out of the
line of fire. Fortunately none of them were actually hurt, just here.
One fellow was sleeping with several canteens of water hanging right
over his head. A bullet went through them. He was nearly drowned!

=The Bloodiest Fifteen Minutes of the War=

In our front, this artillery fire kept up for a while, then it stopped!
The next moment, there was an awful rush! From every quarter their
infantry came pouring on over the fields, and through the woods, yelling
and firing, and coming at a run. Their columns seemed unending! Enough
people to sweep our thin lines from the face of the earth! Up and down
our battle line, the fierce musketry broke out. To right and left it
ran, crashing and rolling like the sound of a heavy hail on a tin roof,
magnified a thousand times, with the cannon pealing out in the midst of
it like claps of thunder. Our line, far as the eye could reach, was
ablaze with fire; and into that furious storm of death, the blue columns
were swiftly urging their way.

Straight in our front one mass was advancing on us and we were hurling
case-shot through their ranks,--when, suddenly! glancing to the right,
we saw another column, which had rushed out of the woods on our right
front, by the flank, almost upon us, not forty-five yards outside our
line. Instantly we turned our guns upon them with double canister! Two
or three shots doubled up the head of that column. It resolved itself
into a formless crowd, that still stood stubbornly there, but could not
get one step farther. And then, for three or four minutes, at short
pistol range,