He wrote to Arthur Brent, addressing his letter to Wyanoke, whence it would of course be forwarded should Doctor Brent be at Petersburg still.
I want you, Arthur [he wrote], to use your influence in my behalf in a matter that touches me closely. For several reasons I want to be ordered from this place to Petersburg. For one thing, there is a matter of business, vitally interesting to you and me and closely involving the welfare of others. I simply must see you concerning it without delay. If I can get to Petersburg, I can see you, for Wyanoke is near enough to the beleaguered city for you to visit me in the trenches. There are other reasons, but the necessity of seeing you is the most important and the least personal to myself, so I need not bother you now with the other considerations that move me to desire this change, which you can bring about if you will—and I am sure you will.
I should ask for the transfer of the battery now under my command, if I did not know that it would be idle to do so. For some reason General Early seems to have taken a fancy to me, and still more to two highly improved rifle guns that I recently added to the battery by capture. He will never let me go unless compelled by orders to do so.
But I see another way. I learn that our mortar fire at Petersburg is less effective than it should be, by reason of our lack of battery officers skilled in handling that species of ordnance. Now that is a direction in which I could render specially valuable service, not only by commanding many mortar pits myself, and instructing the men, but also by teaching our unskilled battery officers what to do with such guns, and how to do it. If you will personally see General Lee’s chief of artillery and lay the case before him, I am sure he will order me transferred to the trenches. You can tell him that I was graduated at Annapolis, taking special honours in gunnery. You need tell him no more of my personal history than that after graduation I resigned from the navy to study medicine, and that you learned to know me well in our student days at Jena, Berlin, and Paris.
Do this thing for me, Arthur, and do it as quickly as possible. And as soon as I reach Petersburg, make some occasion to see me there, bearing in mind that to see you with reference to matters of vital importance to others is my primary purpose in asking for this transfer.
Arthur Brent was at Wyanoke when this letter came, but he hastened to Petersburg to execute his friend’s commission. He told more of Kilgariff’s personal history than Kilgariff had suggested. That is to say, he told of his gallantry at Spottsylvania and of its mention in general orders. He had neither to urge nor beseech. No sooner was the chief of artillery made aware of the facts than he answered:—
“I want such a man badly. Orders for his immediate transfer to the lines here shall go to-day.”
So it came about that before the end of that week, Owen Kilgariff stood in a drenching rain-storm and nearly up to his knees in the mud of a mortar pit at Petersburg, bombarding a salient in the enemy’s lines.
The storm of bullets and rifle shells that raged around his pits was as ceaseless as the downpour of rain, but as calmly as a schoolmaster expounding a lesson in algebra, he alternately instructed his men and explained to the half a dozen subaltern officers who had been sent to him to learn. He was teaching them the methods of mortar range-finding, the details of powder-gauging for accuracy, the art of fuse-cutting, and all the rest of it, when out of a badly exposed covered way came Doctor Arthur Brent to greet him.