The appalling fear before me, as I faced those fellows advancing, with their guns loaded and bayonets fixed, pointing at my horse's breast, was that they wouldn't let me through, but might drive me ahead of them. I was not ambitious to lead them down through that valley, where so much noise was being made by Rebel yells and musketry.
I will never forget that double row of dirty faces. They had been on a forced march all day, perhaps, to reach the field. The dust of the roads had adhered to their perspiring faces, presenting a war-paint effect that was ludicrous even at so serious a time.
"How does a man feel in battle?" is a question often asked, or "Were you frightened the first time?" My answer is: "Yes, and every other time." I never heard a shell screech, or a minie-ball whistle or whiz, that I wished, with all my soul, that I had not come. I was scared when I went in the first and the last battle.
At the end of every fight I felt, somehow, as if the war was a failure, and we might as well go home, we so seldom had the satisfaction of seeing the Rebels run.
A majority of people have formed an idea that a battle is a continuous uproar, from daylight until dark, or during all of the day on which it occurs. As a matter of fact, the real fight is soon over, one way or another; that is, the actual contest of the larger bodies ends about as suddenly as a collision on a railroad.
It is a long time beginning; may be the picket-firing of the night previous is the first indication; then will come the more frequent clattering from the skirmish-line, with an occasional shot from a battery; perhaps it ends with this.
I have nearly always noticed that the officers and men thought it had ended, and were only suddenly awakened to the fact that it had not, by a tremendous boom from some battery, that would nearly always be discovered to be at some point they did not expect a hostile shot to come from.
It may not be an agreeable thing to print, but it has been my experience in battle, that it was always the unexpected that happened to our officers.
The first time I was under fire, I happened to be near a battery, and became so much excited by the booming of the guns, and the action of the men and officers, that I did not realize my danger.
A battery pounding shot into an enemy is the most inspiriting music a soldier can hear. Of course, you can not tell whether the shot hit any one or not, as they go so far, but you instinctively feel, from the big noise and fussy kick the thing makes every time it is fired, that something must get hurt at the other end.