e rest of the army in great strait,
certainly, and probably demoralized.

One of the cannon shot had gone through our Colonel's horse, and the
rider had been carried off the field. Colonel Pugh, of the Forty-first
Illinois, then took command of the brigade, about-faced us, and marched
us back across the little field, and halted us just behind the fence,
the enemy during this maneuver leaving us wholly undisturbed.

The rails were thrown down and we lay flat upon the ground, while
another battery came up and opened on the enemy, who had moved up
almost to the wreck of our first battery.

Here, then, began a fierce artillery duel. Shot and shell went over us
and crashing through the trees to the rear of us, and I suppose that
shot and shell went crashing through the trees above the enemy; but if
they didn't suffer any more from shot and shell than we did, there was
a great waste of powder and iron that day. But how a fellow does hug
the ground under such circumstances! As a shell goes whistling over him
he flattens out, and presses himself into the earth, almost. Pity the
sorrows of a big fat man under such a fire.

Later in the war we should have dug holes for ourselves with bayonets.
We must have lain there hugging the ground for more than two hours,
with now and then an intermission, listening to the flight of dreaded
missiles above us; but, as nobody in our immediate neighborhood was
hurt, we at length voted the performance of the artillery to be, on the
whole, rather fine. During intermissions, while the scenes were
shifting, as it were, we began to feel a disposition to talk and joke
over the situation.

The reason why we were not subjected to an infantry fire, was because
the enemy's forces, tangled in the wooded country, and in places beaten
back by the stubborn gallantry of our surprised but not demoralized
men, needed to be reorganized. All the Southern accounts agree that
their brigades and divisions had become mixed in apparently hopeless
confusion. The battlefield was so extensive that fighting was going on
at some point all the time, so that at no time was there a complete
cessation of the roar of artillery or the rattle of musketry.

Two or three times General Hurlbut came riding along our line; and
once, during a lull, General Grant and staff came slowly riding by, the
General with a cigar in his mouth, and apparently as cool and
unconcerned as if inspection was the sole purpose of visiting us. The