Johnston admits a Confederate loss of 808 killed and wounded. That ended Sherman's attempt to force our lines, and started his flanking operations again. Soon we were ordered back southwest of the Chattahoochee river, where we occupied a fort, overlooking the Western & Atlantic railroad bridge, and were soon faced by the enemy with infantry and artillery again entrenched, with a rifle battery on opposite side of river three-quarters of a mile away. They would occasionally try a little target practice at our fort. Our orders were to refrain from firing unless an attempt was made to cross the river. On our side there was merely infantry enough to picket the river.
The fort was an enclosed one, i.e., had parapet all around, and embrassures in all directions, as if built to stand a siege even if entirely surrounded by the enemy. Our four guns were its whole armament however, fronting the river and its destroyed bridge below us.
We here bivouaced at ease. The slope in rear of fort had some shade bushes and formed a comparatively safe camping grounds, but we lost one man here who was in rear of, and outside of the fort. A rifle shell just missed the front parapet, cut a furrow in the rear parapet, and took off the head of a private, named Maner, another Georgian. Some of us who were inside the fort saw his straw hat rise ten feet in the air and knew that another comrade had gone.
Here, on July 17th, at evening roll call, technically named the "Retreat" call, the memorable order was read to our command, relieving Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, and placing Gen. J. B. Hood, in command of the army. It was received in dead silence, and figuratively speaking "our hearts went down into our boots," or whatever happened to be covering our heel.
The army had still the fullest confidence in Johnston. They knew that for more than two months he had baffled Sherman in spite of his overpowering force of two to one, and had inflicted heavy losses on the enemy, with small loss to his own army either in men or material. They idolized Johnston and were ready to fight, whenever Johnston was ready. They believed "Old Joe" knew his business, and did not believe that Sherman could hold on to his line of supplies, and still surround the city. They believed that President Davis had made a terrible mistake, and that belief remains to the officers and men of the army of Tennessee to this day. They admired Hood, his personal character and gallantry, but they believed in Johnston as second only to Robert E. Lee, and that the Confederacy did not hold another man who could so well serve her.
Sherman moving the main portion of his army towards the northeast, covered by the Chattahoochee, but still holding the W. & A. railroad with his right wing, our battery was ordered to report to Gen. Wheeler, who with his cavalry was on the extreme right of our army. We were placed in position on the bank of the Chattahoochee, where a ravine entered the river at a very acute angle, forming a narrow ridge between river and ravine, so that by cutting down into the ground and throwing the dirt out toward the ravine, we made level places for our guns with a solid wall of earth as high as the muzzle of our guns, overlooking the slope toward the river, the hills opposite, and the Federal entrenchments along the upper edge of the fields with an embrasured battery in view. Our entrenchment, as described, made no show. We were there simply to guard against an easy crossing at this point.
Lt. A. C. Hargrove, next day was standing at the parapet near muzzle of 3rd piece talking to Corporal Maxwell, who was gunner to that piece. A puff of smoke came from a Federal embrasure across the river and both squatted below the protecting bank. The shell struck the body of an oak tree standing just in front, and some twenty feet above the ground, tearing off a heavy fragment, slightly larger than a man's forearm, which came down with force, the end cutting through Hargroves' hat on his forehead and to the skull, a gash two inches long. Maxwell said: "Lieut., they are cutting at us close," still looking to the front. Hargrove said: "Well, they got me." Maxwell turned around and there stooped Hargrove, hat on ground, and his hands to his head, with blood gushing through his fingers all down over him. He was much stunned with the blow, but when Maxwell spread the lips of the wound, and the blood ran out, the solid skull of his forehead showed uncrutched. Nevertheless the blow threatened concussion of the brain, and he was sent home for several weeks. Dr. N. P. Marlowe, then surgeon with Wheeler's corps taking him in his own ambulance to the Hospital, after dressing his wound.
The enemy crossing in force, lower down the river, our battery was retired from this position and placed on the main line of defense northeast of Atlanta, and was soon faced by the enemy again, after the battle of Peachtree Creek, with his entrenchments forming quite an angle in our front, some 800 yards away, but his lines stretched from that angle almost perpendicularly away from us toward his left.
On July 22nd, Hardee's corps of Confederates attacked Sherman's left and drove it for a long distance back toward his center. The right of this fleeing corps came into our range making for the protection of their works at this angle and Lumsden's guns shelled them just in front of their own works as they reached them, we firing over the heads of the Georgia militia, who were pushed forward across the valley as if to join in an assault, but were soon returned to their works after considerable loss.
Seeing these old citizens wounded and dying struck us with sympathy, with somewhat of the same feelings we might have experienced at seeing a lot of women sacrificed. They started in the charge, had withdrawn to the trenches again. We were accustomed to that with regular soldiers, but the sacrifice of these old citizens affected us to an unusual degree.