The now familiar sight of masses of rebels, screaming the familiar yell, appeared in our front. As the mass approached I recognized them and called to the men: “Boys, there are the same troops that fought us at Iuka; are you going to let them touch our guns today?” The yell of rage that went up was more ominous than a rebel yell ever tried to be.
At six hundred yards the Eleventh opened with shell. The men worked like tigers in their desperate resolve that their beloved guns would never again feel the insult of a rebel touch.
Three times they charged and three times they were repulsed. Each time they came so close that we resorted to double charges of canister and never a rebel reached the muzzles of our guns. By four o’clock the Confederates were staggering back or surrendering in squads.
From some prisoners taken at Corinth it was learned that they were still unnerved from the moral effect of their assaults at Iuka. Those prisoners stated that, as they went into the assault, they recognized the bark of the guns of the Eleventh Ohio. Before these guns they had seen hundreds of their comrades fall like wheat before the harvester. They felt that they could not again silence the guns of the Eleventh. It had taken five assaults to do so when the odds were many to one.
At daylight of October 5th, after a night spent in convoying prisoners and caring for the wounded, we started in pursuit of the remains of Price’s and Van Dorn’s armies. During that day’s march our army simply gathered in throngs of rebels. The retreating force had been three days without regular rations and were too weak to escape.
For two long days and nights we pressed our foes until our condition was hardly better than theirs. At one A. M. on the second night’s march, we were stumbling along, almost dead with fatigue, when suddenly a band struck up the familiar song—John Brown’s Body. Other bands joined; we all woke up and were soon swinging along without a thought of our condition. I have often wondered what moral effect this musical demonstration, at dead of night, had upon our quarry.
It took us three days to return to Corinth, horses stumbling with weariness, men asleep in their saddles, tired but happy, a victory won against odds.