About two months after the battle of Manassas our commanding general, Joseph E. Johnston, took a notion to move the army up toward Washington to see what was going on; perhaps to find out if the Yankees had really gone back across the Potomac in the flight from Bull Run. Two days after, not two months, would have been considered too long for this move by some men.

Our regiment was sent to Mason and Munson's Hill, within sight of Alexandria and the dome of the Capitol in Washington. The Federal army seemed to be around Alexandria on this side of the river.

One very dark night a party of us was taken out for outpost duty. We followed an old road, and two men were left at each post with instructions to make no noise and both to stay awake. My companion was Henry Parnell. We stood in the road at the end of what seemed, in the pitchy darkness, to be an old barn or stable. Sometime in the night, when all was still and quiet as a graveyard, we heard a movement in the loft of the barn. We moved up closer to each other and I felt my hair rising on my head. The noise became louder. I whispered to Henry to know what he thought it meant. “M-a-n, I think,” he whispered. We waited in breathless silence. Then there was more noise, as if there were several of them. “You go around that side of the house and I'll go on this side,” I whispered. On my side was a door, on Henry's, a window. The door was closed. I stood a moment by it, listening; and I took hold of it softly and jerked it open. As I did so Henry yelled out, “O-o-e-ee!” and exclaimed, “It's a cat! He jumped right into my breast.”

Just before daylight the corporal of the guard came to relieve us. We reported, “Nothing unusual observed.”

One night I was detailed, with John Webb, for an advanced picket post. Knowing that soldiers on guard, “taking turns” with one another, never agree about the “off time” - that is, the time spent alternately in sleep by them - I urged that we both stay up all night. John objected, and I finally let it go his way, with probably a “mental reservation.”

I let John take the first “off,” and woke him up when I thought he had slept two hours, to take his turn keeping watch. He protested, of course, that he had not slept two hours. Then I stretched out on the ground for my nap. It seemed to me that I had just gotten soundly to sleep when John nudged me, saying, “Your time.” I got up, rubbed my eyes and took my position on the off side of the big chestnut tree, but I called up that “mental reservation” and as soon as John got to snoring vigorously I went round and woke him up. He said he had just gotten to sleep, but I pointed out a star and told him about its position when he “turned in” and remarked: “Stars don't lie.” I lay down, but did not shut my eyes. Presently I yawned and turned over. John came and stooped over me in order to be sure I was sleeping soundly. Then he spoke, “Sorry to have to wake you, but - ” “Confound you!” I said, “you don't have to wake me, for I haven't closed my eyes since I lay down, and I haven't been here for a half hour.” He admitted he might be mistaken. Then we agreed to spend the rest of the night without “taking turns,” but it seemed to me the longest night I ever spent.

On one occasion I saw two men executed, men who had been tried by a court-martial and sentenced to be shot. I am sure it will interest my young friends to know exactly how it is done, so I will describe the affair.

It was in the fall or early part of the winter of 1861-1862, while our army was stationed at Centerville. We had in the army a battalion of men from Louisiana, known as the “Tiger Rifles.” They wore Zouave uniforms, that is, baggy knee breeches, stockings, a jacket, and a turban. Each one carried also a large camp knife in a sheath suspended from his waist-belt. They were said to be rough men, requiring the strictest discipline by the officers. Two of them had overpowered an officer and was about to kill him, and for this they had been court-martialed and condemned to be shot.

On one of those occasions that frequently occurred in the hurried forming of a line of battle, it happened that a farmhouse occupied by an old gentleman and his wife and daughter was exactly on the line. Supposing, like ourselves, that the battle would begin in a few minutes, they hurried away, leaving everything at the mercy of the soldiers. The battle did not take place, however, and that afternoon some of the boys tested the old man's honey. In doing so they angered the bees and some of those who had no part in taking the honey got stung. Among them was my close companion and messmate, Billy Dasher. His sting was just under the eye, and by next morning that member was completely closed up and his entire face much swollen.

The owner of the house returned and at once made complaint to our captain, who happened to be right at hand, that the men had been taking his honey. “They shall be punished, sir,” the captain promptly replied, and suiting his action to his word immediately instructed the orderly sergeant to call out the company for investigation. Standing before the company, he appealed to the men to act honorably in the matter and not put him to the trouble of interrogating each man. He asked all who had taken part in the affair to step out and take their punishment like men. Promptly five or six stepped forward, among them my friend, Dasher. Announcing their punishment, ten days extra guard duty, he dismissed the company. Now Dasher was known by everybody in the company to be a model soldier in ever respect, and some of us were present when he was stung and we knew he didn't have anything to do with taking the honey. Of course we wanted to know what he meant by stepping forward as one of the guilty. He explained it thus: “You see, if with my face swollen by a bee sting I had not pleaded guilty, the captain and others would have probably have thought I was not acting honorably in failing to own up as the others did, so I just decided to take the punishment rather than create that kind of impression.” Rare man he was, and a better soldier never followed Lee.

On one occasion when our regiment was trying to occupy an advanced position just beyond an open space through which the cannon balls and shells were flying, our commander ordered us to run across in groups. Just as my group got fairly into the opening a shell exploded right at the head of the man in front of me. He was knocked down and hurled several feet. When I reached the woods on the other side, Lieutenant Bliss, commanding our company at that time, exclaimed in surprise, “Why, Zettler, I was sure that it was you that shell killed.” “No,” I replied, “it was Jim Carolan, and the shell took his head off right at his shoulders.” While we were still speaking of the occurrence, Jim ran into the midst of us, his face so blackened by the powder that we scarcely recognized him. The concussion had knocked him down, but fortunately the fragments of the shell had all missed him.

Captain Dunlap Scott of our regiment had been assigned to the command of the rear guard, whose duty it was to scour the woods to the right and left of the marching column on a retreat to pick up stragglers and foragers. It became the custom of the boys, when a man was seen sneaking away in the woods to yell, “Scott! Scott!” and sometimes when the captain made his appearance in the camp some wag would put his face to the ground and yell, “S-c-o-t-t!” Immediately the cry would be taken up by others, and others, until it traveled entirely through the brigade.

On our trip from Northern Virginia, in the spring of 1862, to the Peninsula, we passed through Richmond. Captain Scott had been absent on sick leave. As we marched down Main Street he walked out of the Spotswood Hotel. Immediately some one yelled “S-c-o-t-t!” and the marching column took it up. The merchants ran to their doors to see what was the matter, and some even came out into the street to inquire who was General Scott that the men were cheering so loudly. Captain Scott, when the yelling began, coolly stepped upon the carriage stone in front of the hotel and stood with bared head, waving his hat and smiling as if returning thanks for a compliment the soldiers were paying him.

It was the first afternoon, I think, of our arrival on the Peninsula, in March, 1862, to reinforce Magruder, who was holding McClellan in check. Through a dense smoke from burning woods we were moved into a hummock that was being vigorously shelled. Limbs and tree tops were falling about us and shells bursting overhead. It became so “hot” that Colonel Lamar remarked, “They are shooting as if they know we are here; break ranks and take care of yourselves behind the trees.” We did so very promptly. There was some desultory shooting just ahead of us, as if pickets were exchanging shots. Presently the cannonading ceased and all was quiet except the occasional crack of a rifle. Suddenly there was a shout, a sort of “Hoo-raw,” such as the Yankees sometimes made when about to charge, followed immediately by a volley of musketry - all seemingly not more than a hundred yards in our front. We rushed into line and were ordered to lie down. Then we heard a noise as if ten thousand Texas steers were coming toward us. And now, bursting up us, came a mob of panicky soldiers - Confederates. They were without guns; some had spades in their hands, and others a cartridge box or a coat. They were looking in the tree tops and their eyeballs were as large as tea-cups. The toe of one fellow struck my head and he fell between me and the next man in line. As soon as he struck the ground he began wildly to ask, “Is this Company E? Is this Company E?” “No, you fool!” my comrade said. The man was on his feet at once and, tearing away the bushes, continued his wild flight to the rear.

“Attention, forward!” came from our colonel. We rushed forward and entered a somewhat open space and, there before us, not fifty yards distant was what seemed to be about two companies of Yankees standing in line with their back to us. We fired and rushed ahead with a yell, loading and shooting as we ran. It was now the Yankees' turn for a stampede, and, every man for himself, they skedaddled. We followed them into the pond, but the water seemed to stretch out beyond sight in front of us. The Yankees were in up to their waists and some of our boys did not stop until they got in as deep. Then we dropped back to a shallow ditch at the edge of the water and were ordered to “get down.” We had scarcely gotten into the ditch when the cannons opened on the other side of the swamp, making it necessary for us to keep well down in the ditch, and for an hour they made it very uncomfortable for us. That portion of the ditch where I was had not less than fifteen inches of water in it, but it was safe, so we held our places without murmuring until the firing ceased, then we crawled out and stretched off on the ground for a good night's rest.

This affair, as I afterward gathered it from various sources, was this: A North Carolina regiment was holding the position along this swamp and creek with a dam across the stream, causing the overflow of the hummocks and swamp above. The regiment was engaged in throwing up a line of breastworks, their guns being stacked in the rear, with their accouterments and jackets hung on them. A few pickets were down at the edge of the water. The Yankees on the opposite side, learning the situation, resolved to wade through without firing and surprise and stampede the force at work on the entrenchment and cut the dam. One of the wounded Yankees told me it was four companies of a Vermont regiment, the Third, I think, that undertook the venture, and he said they were to be handsomely rewarded if they succeeded. He said also that they were told there were no other Confederate troops near, “for the woods in the rear had been shelled till a rat couldn't stay in them.” He pluckily declared, too, that if we hadn't been there they would have succeeded. And it did look that way, but that little if spoiled it.

It is thought by many if Albert Sidney Johnston had not received a mortal wound at a critical moment in the Battle of Shiloh or Pittsburg Landing, General Grant would never have been heard of after that battle; and a still great number believe that if the accidental shooting of Stonewall Jackson by his own men at Chancellorsville had not occurred, Hooker's army would have suffered a more disastrous defeat than McDowell sustained at Manassas, and the battle of Gettysburg, if fought at all, would have been a Confederate victory and resulted in the establishment of the Confederate Government - all changed by that little word if.

While McClellan was extending his lines around Richmond in the summer of 1862, and General Lee was planning to “Lift him out of his boots,” as we know he did in the memorable Seven Days' Battles, our regiment was doing picket duty just beyond Price's farm near the Nine Mile Road and only about five miles from the city. The picket lines were too near for fires and cooking, and with my messmate, Bill Dasher, I had the good luck to be detailed on the cook squad to prepare rations and bring them to the company each day. We usually got up each morning at daylight, started the log heap fire and put on the camp kettles to boil the chunks of beef, each piece about three-fourths of a pound in weight, and got the “spiders” ready to bake the thirty-five or forty hoe cakes (one for each man). By eight o'clock we were on our way to the picket line with our camp kettles, filled with meat and bread, swung on a pole between us. After distributing the rations we returned to the cook camp and spent the afternoon in reading such books or papers as we could get hold of or in playing cards or shooting marbles. Our readers will readily understand now why the cook squad appointment was considered a lucky detail. There was no standing guard; no picket duty for them.

Our camp being, as I have said, only about five miles from Richmond, it was very natural for the boys to slip away and spend the evening in the city. To prevent this, sentinel posts had been established at three or four places on all the roads leading into the city. But the boys soon learned to “run the blockade.” I proposed to Dasher that we try it one evening. He assented and, getting the necessary points about the location of the sentinel posts from the boys who had been in, we set out about sunset. We made a successful “run,” and in about two hours were at the front door of our friend, Mr. W. W. Yarrington, whom I mentioned in a previous chapter. The family were delighted to see us again and Mrs. Yarrington and her niece, Miss Josie Sharpe, insisted on giving us a square home-cooked supper. We yielded. Then they filled our haversacks with all sorts of good things and, learning that we had time to read, included several magazines. The hours flew quickly, and soon it was time for retiring. We told them that our duties required us to be back at the camp by sunrise and we must leave the city by dawn. Mr. Yarrington showed us how to use the night latch to get out and then conducted us to our room. When we looked at the snowy sheets and pillow slips, we decided they were too nice for us, so we stretched off on the floor and were soon asleep. We woke at daylight and started for camp.

We had learned that the sentinels along the road were instructed to stop no soldiers going out of the city to their commands, so we had no fear of being arrested and kept the road. When we had gone about tow miles we discovered that we were not in the right road, so we concluded to pass through a skirt of woods to the road farther east, which we were told was the “Nine Mile Road” - our road. As we emerged from the woods a soldier rose out of the grass and, leveling his “smoothbore” at us, called out, “Halt there!” He came up to us and said, “Running the blockade, eh?” “By no means,” I replied, “we are on our way to camp.” “What you doing off the road if you're going to camp?” We showed him our haversacks filled with city cooked things, bread and ham and cakes, and our magazines, but they failed to convince him. He was proud of his prisoners as a country urchin of his first bluejay and he marched us to the sergeant at the road. I think the sergeant was satisfied that we were, this time, on our way out, but he probably suspected that we might have “run the blockade” going in. So he thought it best to send us to our colonel, and our captor was told to take us to him. One the way we repeated our story and explained how we came to be in that woods, and we assured him that our colonel would not do a thing to us and he would have his long walk for nothing. We asked him to sit down and rest while we went to the spring for a drink of water. But nothing would move him from his purpose. He was a “new issue,” as we called the soldiers who enlisted the second year of the war, and had just come from the coast near Savannah. He was yet “fresh,” and under the impression that a soldier must always obey orders and never “look the other way” when he had a comrade a prisoner.

When we came in sight of the colonel's tent-fly I said, “See the man yonder in his shirt sleeves; he is our colonel.” he had probably never seen an officer without his coat, and seemed not inclined to believe me, but we were soon in the colonel's presence. “Good-morning, Colonel!” we said, “here is a Richmond Dispatch, and see what our Richmond friends gave us on our way to camp,” at the same time covering his camp chest with the best in our haversacks. “Yes, yes, yes, boys! those Richmond ladies are the finest in the world. We must not let the Yankees take Richmond, boys, never, never!” “But, colonel, we are prisoners. This man arrested us on our way out and insisted on bringing us to our colonel.” “Ah,” said he, looking at our captor, “and were you instructed to bring them to their colonel? Well, I'm Colonel Lamar of the Eight Georgia Regiment, and these are my men, so you have done your duty. You may go.” “On the cook squad, boys?” addressing us. “I see! then you may go too.”

We concluded to give our “new issue” a point or two, and went after him. “Say, here, you mosquito-fighter, we are two and you are one; you are our prisoner now, and we intend to initiate you. Yes, sir, when we get through with you you'll know a thing or two.” He was thoroughly “scared up” and pleaded with us not to hurt him. But we assured him it was necessary for him to go “through the course.” The tears gathered in his eyes, and he declared if we would just “post” him about the ways of old soldiers he would always hereafter try to follow them. Being satisfied that he was thoroughly repentant, we agreed to let him off this time and allowed him to go. “Say, boys,” he said, as he started, “are all the colonels out here like yourn?” We answered “Not quite,” which was true, for Lamar was one of the handsomest officers in Lee's army, and as clever and brave as he was handsome, and he was the idol of his regiment.

Early in the war scouts and pickets got to resorting to all sorts of projects for obtaining information about things in front. One of these was climbing into the top of a tree. The other fellows, however, soon found this out, and it got to be a dangerous venture, for with field-glasses they would locate you and send a rifle ball into the tree top, and sometimes they would even use a small rifled cannon to bring down the man in the tree.

On one occasion when I was away from the company for a few days on a special detail, it changed position, and in reaching the company I passed under a large cherry tree that had quantities of cherries on it. I asked the boys why they did not get them. “The Yankees object,” they replied. “They seem to keep a watch on that tree and shoot into it if they see the leaves shake.” “Nonsense,” I said, “they can't see anyone among the leaves in that tree.” “Try it if you want to test the matter,” they said, and I proceeded to do so. When I got up about ten feet from the ground, I looked over the hill and, sure enough, there were two or three Yankees standing at a cannon seemingly less than three hundred yards distant. I stood on a limb and reached my hand up among the cherries, keeping my eyes fixed, however, on the cannon. There was a flash. I let my feet go from under me and struck the ground just as the ball whisked through the tree where I had been standing. I concluded, like the fox with the grapes, that those cherries were no good anyway and I did not want them.

While the army was in front of Richmond, previous to the Seven Days' Battles, we received a payment from the Government of twenty dollars as a bounty or for service. Many of the men at once began to gamble with their money. One day a party of them was having an unusually interesting game. They were sitting on the ground just under the brow of the hill; the cards and “chips” and “pot” were on a few pieces of boards on the ground in front of them. A number of us were standing over them anxious to see who would rake in the “pot.” We forgot, for the moment, that in standing up at that particular place we could be seen by the Yankees at a small sand fort just across the hill. Suddenly there was the report of a cannon and at the same moment a ball tore through the apple tree just above our heads. We dropped down on the players and they in turn tumbled over one another, scattering in every direction the grains of corn that represented “chips” and constituted the “pot.” An ill shot, we might say, that did somebody good.

It was the latter part of August, 1862. Stonewall Jackson had gone to the rear of Pope, seized his supplies at Manassas Junction and cut the telegraph wires between him and Washington city. (Read in the Records of the Federal and Confederate armies, published by the United States Congress, of the telegraphic messages passing between Stanton and Pope at the time Jackson was cutting the wires. They will make you laugh.) Pope it seems was puzzled as to the whereabouts of Lee, and even thought for awhile that the trouble in his rear was only the work of a band of cavalry raiders. A few days after Jackson started on this flank movement, Lee took most of Longstreet's corps from Pope's front, at Rappahannock Station, and, going up the Rappahannock River ten or fifteen miles, crossed over and was proceeding down the turnpike west of Bull Run mountains, with a view doubtless of forming a junction with Jackson on Pope's flank or in his rear.

It was Thursday, the 28th of August, and one of the hottest days I ever experienced, that we were making this rapid march. I learned afterward that we were hastening to get through Thoroughfare Gap and to the east side of this little range of mountains before Pope should discover the movement.

Tige Anderson's brigade formed the head of the column that day, with the Eighth Georgia in the lead. The position of the Oglethorpes - Company B of the regiment - put us very near the front. During most of the morning General Lee and General Longstreet rode side by side just ahead of us, and once in crossing a little stream they stopped to let their horses drink while we continued on up the hill. Presently they rode by and on to the front. General Lee passed close enough for me to have put my hand on “Traveller.” I looked up into General Lee's face as he passed me. It was the closest view I ever had of him. His appearance was exactly as he looks in all the pictures of him, especially the one that is printed with the engraved copy of his farewell address to the army at Appomattox, a picture that hangs on thousands of walls in houses and halls and business offices throughout the South.

About one o'clock we came to a halt in the broiling sun on the turnpike. It was said some of the artillery horses were giving out from the heat and it was necessary to halt the column to let them rest.

Two or three men in the front of the regiment concluded they would go ahead to try to get some buttermilk, or something to eat from one of those dear Virginia housewives who seemed always able to find something for a hungry Confederate. Presently they came running back almost out of breath, and without their guns. They reported that in a village half a mile down the road some Yankee cavalry came on them, and after learning that they belonged to Longstreet's corps of Lee's army and that it was only a half mile away, broke their gunstocks against the trees, and turned them loose. Of course the information they obtained was far more important than caring for two or three prisoners, and they doubtless made rapid time getting the news to Pope.

The men were sent to General Lee, who was only a few steps away, and soon the column was again under way. But now we marched slowly, for a while, with a strong skirmish line in front. After passing through the village we quickened our steps, and were soon in sight of the Gap, eight or ten miles away. Just before sunset we reached it, but in the open space beyond we saw a Yankee battery in position, and in a few moments the shells began bursting in our midst.

We filed to the left along the foot of the mountain and were halted. In a few minutes orders came that skirmishers must be sent up on the mountain to ascertain if it was occupied by the enemy. Companies A and B of the Eighth Georgia were ordered forward and deployed. There were just thirty of us in the two companies.

I shall digress here to say that there are both advantages and disadvantages in being at the head of the column in a march. Those in front are the first to get to the clear stream or a well or the tubs and cans of water that in the early days of the war families at houses we passed would set out on the roadside for us. They were out of the dust, also, and were the first to throw off accouterments and coats at the camping-place. But sometimes, as in the present instance, the way must be cleared, which means a fight.

When the order came for the two companies I have mentioned to deploy and advance, I was standing in front of a cluster of vines and briers well-nigh impenetrable; but soldiers must know no obstacles, so I plunged into the brush and briers. The mountain side was covered with a thick undergrowth of low cedars and vines, and in some places huge masses of rock had broken loose and tumbled down, not only forming a very formidable barrier, but leaving a perpendicular wall of five or six feet that was very difficult to scale. But we clambered up, stopping every few steps to take breath and listen for movements or noises above us that would help us to know who were in our front. Presently I heard a jingling of canteens in the bushes just above me, and almost at the same moment the man with them exclaimed, “Who's down there?” Stephen Baldy, the comrade four or five steps to my left, threw up his gun with his finger on the trigger. I said, in a low tone, “Don't shoot; it may be one of our men.” He replied, “No, I see him; it's a Yankee.” Then the man spoke again, “Say, is that Company A?” “What regiment?” said Baldy, his finger still on the trigger. “Eleventh Massachusetts.” Baldy fired. Now you want to ask, as others have done to whom I have told this story, “Did he kill the man?” I don't know, for right between me and where the man was, a line of men in blue rose, and as their bright guns dropped down toward me I looked into their muzzles a moment - a very short moment - and went over backward. I heard a volley, but I was tumbling, rolling, jumping, falling, and had no time or inclination to look behind me. When I reached the bottom, General Tige Anderson, our brigade commander, was right there, and inquired what I knew. I told him I saw a regiment of Yankees. “Only a regiment?” said he. “That's all I had time to see,” I replied. “You were frightened to death, and don't know what you saw,” he said. I made no reply, but I knew I was not dead quite. Another man pulled himself through the briers and, on being questioned, gave the same information. Then Lieutenant Howard, who had charge of us, came up. “What's the force up there, lieutenant?” said Anderson. “Well, General, we came upon them very unexpectedly, and - ” “Yes, and they stampeded you like they did the boys; so you know nothing. Get your men together, sir, and go back and stay there until you know something definite.” Of course there was but one answer to such an order, and so Lieutenant Howard began to line up the men for another advance.

Now the man with the canteens had probably been allowed by his commander to take a number of them from the men and fill them at a spring or branch, and on his return he had lost his bearings and, hearing us, thought we were Company A, Eleventh Massachusetts, for which he was looking. It was a very common thing for an officer to let one man go to fill canteens while we were in line of battle.

Well, of the thirty men who went up the mountain, twenty-nine soon reported, and we started again. The thirtieth one, Jim Carolan, of Company B, had been killed by that volley. Poor fellow He had once before been counted dead by me, - when the shell exploded at his head, - but this time a rifle ball had entered his heart, and there was no mistaking its effect. But in the skirmish line, like on the lonely picket post, “a man or two killed doesn't count in the news of the battle.”

Slowly, cautiously, we crept through and around the cedars and vines, each one wishing that somebody else would come first on those Yankees waiting for us. When near the place where we encountered them before, there was a sharp report of a rifle a few yards to my right. Immediately the line of men in blue rose up just above me. I dropped to the earth. Luckily a rock as large as a flour barrel jutted out right in front of me. The regiment fired over my head. They dropped down, and another just above them rose and fired and dropped; a third, and a fourth, and a fifth did the same thing in quick succession. The last one was some distance up the mountain and their balls struck all around me. With that volley the firing ceased. I thought I knew “something definite,” and heels over head I went down the hill. Several had made better time than I did and had rendered their reports. In answer to General Anderson's questions, I told what I saw and how I came to see what I reported. He calmly said, “You seem to know something,” and turned to the next man. Then he sent a courier to General Longstreet, to inform him of the force on the mountain.

In a few minutes an officer galloped up and, saluting, said, “General Longstreet's compliments, General, and he directs that you make an assault at once, that you'll be supported by his entire corps, and General Wilcox will assault in the rear.”

I have so often been asked to tell in detail the circumstances under which I received my wound and the incidents immediately following it, I have concluded that since I am giving personal incidents, with myself usually as the hero, I will include this one among my stories.

Near sunset on the 30th day of August, 1862, - the day on which Lee defeated Pope in the big battle of Second Manassas, - our division commander, General Hood, threw his division into line for a final charge against what I afterward learned was a collection of twelve pieces of artillery. Once, while the line was moving at a double-quick over hills and valleys, General Hood came at a full gallop down the line, now in rear, now in front. As he passed the right of the Eighth Georgia I heard him say, “Go it, boys, we'll give them more than they can attend to!” Presently up the line came the command, repeated from one to another: “Division, left wheel Division, left wheel!” Our regiment was, I think, the extreme right of the division, and the “wheel” brought us quickly on the flank or side of the cannons and within range of their infantry support. There was a moment's pause of the regiment, probably to re-align before rushing on the guns. Just then some of the guns changed the direction of their fire from front to side, and the first ball they sent went ricocheting along the rear of the regiment. (We were still facing the infantry support and somewhat in rear of the cannons.) The second ball struck the ground a few steps to my left, rose and struck me, tearing away a pound or more of flesh from the underpart of my left thigh six inches above the knee and cutting a shallow groove through the right, the right foot being on the swing for a step forward at the moment.

As soon as I struck the ground two or three of my comrades stooped over and asked if I could be carried. I straightened out my legs and, finding no bones broken, replied, “Yes.” They quickly unrolled my indiarubber cloth that I was carrying instead of a blanket, put me in it and trotted off about twenty steps and dropped me in a hillside gully. They then ran back and rejoined the regiment. Just then Wright's Georgia brigade swept over me, going somewhat to the right of our position. I afterward learned that they swept the Federal infantry from our front, and our regiment, with the others of the division, captured the entire lot of cannon, - twelve pieces, - together with thirty new ambulances parked in the woods just behind them.

Not more than fifteen feet above me and in an exposed place lay a man who had been wounded. The cannon-balls were plowing up the ground around him, and it seemed every moment he would be torn to pieces.