Into Mexico with General Scott / When attached to the Fourth United States Infantry, Division of Major-General William J. Worth, Corps of the famous Major-General Winfield Scott, known as Old Fuss and Feathers, campaign of 1847, lad Jerry Cameron marched and fought beside Second Lieutenant U. S. Grant all the way from Cera Cruz to the City of Mexico, where six thousand American soldiers planted the Stars and Stripes in the midst of one hundred and fifty thousand amazed people

by Edwin L. Sabin

“Charge—bayonets! Run!”

And run they all did, with a yell, Jerry and the drummers and fifers pelting behind, the officers to the fore, Drum’s battery following by the road. Grape and canister and musket ball met them; men fell; the firing was worse than that of the bridgehead at Churubusco, but the Fourth Regiment luckily found itself in an angle of the wall surrounding the mill yard and could rally under protection. The enemy was inside, sheltered by the walls of the mill buildings and by sandbag parapets upon the flat roofs. The shouting and the rapid firing announced thousands of Mexicans.

All the bright morning was dulled by powder and rent by the cheering, the yelling, and the continuous reports of muskets and cannon. From the angle of the wall where the Fourth crouched, the battlefield to the west stretched full in view—the soldiers charging down across it, staggering, limping, crumpling, but closing ranks as they tore on, their bayonets set. The Cadwalader reinforcements and the Light Battalion had mingled with the shattered Wright column; they were bearing on together, and disappeared in the cactus-fringed trenches. What of Hannibal, Jerry wondered.

But here was Drum’s battery section, dragged forward by hand to a nearer position in the road. It scarcely had been pointed and the linstocks applied to the touch holes when every gunner was swept away by the Mexican balls, leaving the guns alone. Led by Corporal Finerty, out rushed a squad of the Fourth, reloaded one of the guns and discharged it again and again.

The men plastered within the angle of the wall were firing with their muskets whenever they had the chance. Old Sergeant Mulligan was right out in the open, lying behind a large cactus with broad spongy lobes, and aiming and shooting and loading and aiming once more. He did not seem to know that the Mexican bullets were riddling the cactus lobes as if they were paper.

Amidst the hurly-burly orders came to leave the cover of the wall.

“Up, men! Battalion, by the left flank, left face, double time—march!”

That took them to the road again.

“Battalion, forward! Through that gate, men! Break it down! Hurrah!”

“Huzzah! Huzzah!”