When we were formed in the line of assault and my company, B, 113th Illinois Volunteer infantry, was at rest in place, an officer of Grant's staff came to us with the proposition that any three men who would volunteer to go in the storming party, then forming to be sent in advance against the enemy's works, should have sixty days furlough home. We looked into each others faces for some seconds. We were speechless and felt a dread of what might develop. We knew that as a general thing the man who volunteers and goes into the storming party "leaves all hope behind." It means nearly sure death. Like the Irishman I didn't want to go "and leave my father an orphan." Finally there was a movement. Old Joe Smith, white headed, rough visaged and grizzled by the storms of a half century, stepped to the front and calling back to his bunkmate said, "Come on, Lish," and Elisha Johns filed out by his side. Then after a brief interval Sergt. James Henry volunteered for the third place. Company B's quota was now complete, and those brave fellows hurried away to take their places in the ranks of the storming party. Some reader of these lines may ask, "Why didn't General Grant detail men for the storming party?" Because, when soldiers enter upon a service that gives them only one chance in a hundred to survive it, the commander doesn't like to bear the responsibility of their deaths, and tenders them the precious privilege of voluntarily dying for their country. We looked upon our three comrades as already dead or wounded men, but strange to relate, although a majority of that gallant band fell in that action, not one of our brave fellows was injured by the missiles of the enemy, and all of them received from General Grant their furlough home as promised.
This storming party, provided with boards and rails to bridge the ditch outside the stockade when they got to it, led the advance or attacking column. And while we stood in line breathlessly awaiting the order to move forward ourselves, I watched that little force of 150 men rush forward towards the battlements of the enemy. How they scurried forward, leaping over the logs and brush lying in their pathway as they pushed on through that leaden and iron hail of death! A scattering few seemed to reach the salient of the bastion and laid down against their works in time to preserve their lives, but as it appeared to me through the clouds of sulphurous smoke a greater part of the blue forms were scattered along their line of advance stretched upon the earth motionless in death. It had come our turn now to face the lead, and we were ordered to fix bayonets.
CHAPTER IV.
CHARGE OF MAY 22D.
WHILE waiting the charge of the storming party and watching their progress across the field to the enemy's works, I noticed a group of general officers close to our left, composed of Grant, Sherman and Giles A. Smith, with their field glasses, watching the little storming party painting a trail of blood across that field. Those distinguished commanders, unlike ourselves, were standing behind large trees, and squinted cautiously out to the right and left, exposing as little of their brass buttons as possible, and I think I saw them dodge a couple of times. I thought of the convincing speech the officer made to his command on the eve of the battle, when he assured them that he might be killed himself, as some balls would go through the biggest trees.
General Ewing's brigade led the assault after the storming party had sped their bolts, and advanced along the crown of an interior ridge which partially sheltered his advance. This command actually entered the parapet of the enemy's works at a shoulder of the bastion, but when the enemy rose up in double ranks and delivered its withering fire his forces were swept back to cover, but the brave and resourceful old Ewing shifted his command to the left, crossed the ditch, pressed forward, and ere long we saw his men scrambling up the outer face of the bastion and his colors planted near the top of the rebel works.
Our brigade was formed in a ravine threatening the parapet, 300 yards to the left of the bastion, and we had connected with Ransom's brigade. From that formation we fixed bayonets and charged point blank for the rebel works at a double quick. Unfortunately for me I was in the front of the rank and compelled to maintain that position, and a glance at the forest of gleaming bayonets sweeping up from the rear, at a charge, made me realize that it only required a stumble of some lubber just behind me to launch his bayonet into the offside of my anatomy, somewhere in the neighborhood of my anterior suspender buttons. This knowledge so stimulated me that I feared the front far less than the rear, and forged ahead like an antelope, easily changing my double quick to a quadruple gait, and most emphatically making telegraph time. During that run and rush I had frequently to either step upon or jump over the bodies of our dead and wounded, which were scattered along our track. The nearer the enemy we got the more enthusiastic we became, and the more confidence we had in scaling their works, but as we neared their parapet we encountered the reserved fire of the rebels which swept us back to temporary cover of a ridge, two-thirds of the way across the field, from which position we operated the rest of the day. When we got back there we had been fighting and maneuvering for more than three hours. Once during the assault I remember the 116th Illinois was on our left. Gen. Giles A. Smith was between me and that regiment; Colonel Tupper, its commander, was making a speech to his men and advising them to take the works or die in the attempt. I thought then, and I have had no reason to change my mind since, that Tupper was gloriously drunk. General Smith snatched off his hat and yelled, "Three cheers for Colonel Tupper." I caught off my cap and together we gave one full grown "Hurrah" and about half another, when the explosion of a monster shell inconveniently near us adjourned the performance sine die. I saw also at another time during the fight, a captain coming back from the front on the run; he had been wounded in the wrist. A man was trying to lead him off the field, but couldn't keep up with the fleet footed captain. He was vainly trying to clutch the wounded man's coat tails as he pursued him, and though under a deadly fire at the time, more than a hundred of us who beheld the race, laughed heartily. When we got behind the ridge we were ordered to lie down, and it felt good to know that we had even a little ridge of solid earth between us and the enemy's bullets. We lay there on our backs and looked back into the throats of the artillery as it shelled the enemy's works over our heads. We could see the balls distinctly as they were discharged from the cannons, and they looked like bumble-bees flying over us, only somewhat larger. While we were thus watching the flight of the balls, one of them struck and cut off the top of a tall sapling standing between us and the cannon; the ball by that means was depressed, and instead of going over us came directly for us and into our midst. Every one who saw it thought, as I did, that the ball was coming straight at him. I rolled over to avoid it; I heard the dull thud of its striking and a scream of agony, and I stood up and looked. That ball had struck and carried away the life of Morris Bird, a private of Company H, and the only son of a widowed mother. I saw a private of the 4th Virginia, which regiment was sheltered there with us also, rise to his feet to fire his gun, when one of our cannon balls took off his head, and it was a clean decapitation, too. The enemy shelled us incessantly the rest of the day after we gained this position, and it cost us many brave men.