r. Talk about being sick, and
going to the hospital, or driving mules! Coward as I was, and I knew it,
there was something about the air that made me feel that I wouldn't be
in the hospital that day for all the money in the world. All idea of
being sorry for the enemy, all charity, all hope that the war might
close before any more men were killed, was gone. After looking in the
upturned faces of our dead and wounded on the field, the more of the
enemy that were killed the better. It is thus that war makes men brutal,
while in active service. They think of things and do things that they
regret immediately after the firing ceases. The next ten minutes was the
nearest thing to hell that I ever experienced, and it seemed as though
my face must look like that of a fiend. I felt like one. The bugle
sounded "forward," and then there was an order to trot, and the
revolver firing began, with the enemy so near that you could see their
countenances, their eyes. Some of them were mounted, others were on
foot, some on artillery caissons, and all full of fight. It did not take
long to exhaust the revolvers, and then the sabers began to come out,
and the horrible word "charge," came from a thousand throats, and every
soldier yelled like a Comanche Indian, the line spread out like a fan,
and every soldier on his own hook. Sabers whacked, horses run, everybody
yelled. Men said "I surrender," "What you jabbing at me for when I ain't
fighting no moah," "Drop that gun, you Johnnie, and go to the rear."
Ones of pain and anguish, and awful sounds that a man ought never to
hear but once. The business was all done in ten minutes.

Many of our men were killed and wounded, and many of theirs were treated
the same way. Those who could get away, got, and those we passed without
happening to hit them, were prisoners, because the infantry followed
and took them back to the rear. Jim and me stayed as near together as
possible, and we noticed one young Confederate on a mule. His left arm
was hanging limp by his side, and as Jim passed on one side of him and I
on the other, he said, as he held up his right hand, "I dun got enough,
and I surrender." The thing was about over, the bugle having sounded the
"recall," and we turned and went back with this Confederate. He was
as handsome a boy as ever fired a gun, and while he was pale from his
shattered left arm, and weak, he said, "You gentlemen are all fine
riders, sir. You fought as well as Southern men, s