That night was spent in strengthening our works and preparing for the work of the morrow, which work we well knew was coming. When morning came the appearance of Old Sol was greeted with a signal from a battery immediately in our front, which had been stationed there during the night and protected by substantial and elaborate earthworks. The shots from this battery were directed against Hotchkiss' battalion of artillery, and which the Fourth Kentucky Infantry was supporting. The enemy's guns from every part of the line kept up a continuous fire throughout the entire day and was the greatest open field bombardment of the war. We were much amused at the manner of firing of the battery in our front, which was done by bugle signal, the meaning of which our men soon learned, for a moment later our works would be pierced by their shells and when they exploded threw high in the air a cloud of dirt and smoke from the embankment that almost covered us up. At intervals of about every five or ten minutes the bugle's "whe-whee-deedle-dee-dee" told us of the crash that was coming and almost lifted our scalps and rendered some of us deaf for weeks. Had the day been an hour longer we would have been compelled to abandon our works, for the embankments were almost leveled and the trenches filled.
Two of Hotchkiss' guns were cut down and had to be abandoned, and but for the fact that they had been run back beyond the crest, not a splinter of them would have been left.
Our batteries did not fire a gun that day, having been ordered to withhold their fire in anticipation of another attack by the enemy's infantry. This day's work was a very clever ruse of Sherman's and demonstrated the cunning of that wily general, for while he was thus entertaining us with the main part of his army, especially his artillery, like the sly old fox that he was, he was planning our undoing by sending down the river to our rear Dodge's Corps to fall on our rear and cut our communications and intercept our retreat.
Had his plan been expedited by Dodge, as it might have been, it would surely have been "all day" with us poor devils of Confederates. It was certainly a "close shave," for which we were all very thankful. But we here on the 14th enjoyed the "picnic" for which we Orphans paid most dearly on the 28th at Dallas, and which I shall describe in another place. War, it seems from my experience and observation, may be described as a dreadful and costly game of "tit-for-tat."
The losses sustained by the Orphans in this engagement at Resaca were insignificant compared with that inflicted upon the enemy in their front. There is not a single recognizable object here save the ground where we fought, from the fact that we arrived here in the night and took our departure in the night. The narrow valley and the long extended ridge in its front and the spur occupied by Hotchkiss and the Fourth Kentucky, is all that I see to remind me of the two days of "pride, pomp and circumstance of glorious war." But how's this, we fighting behind entrenchments and the enemy in the open, four or five lines deep?
"Our loss was 2,747, and his (Johnson's) 2,800. I fought offensively and he defensively, aided by earthwork parapets."—[General Sherman's statement.] There must have been some bad shooting on this occasion—the advantages all on one side, but results so nearly even.
Today, May 16 (1912), marks the forty-eighth anniversary of this important event, and finds me on the ground. Here, as at other places previously mentioned and described, things came back to me and I see them being reenacted. I was accompanied on this inspection by an old comrade (J. H. Norton), who lost an arm at Chancellorsville, and who has lived here in Resaca almost all his life and who was at home at the time, having been discharged on account of the loss of his arm, and who assisted in burying the dead, and he pooh-poohed Sherman's statement as to relative losses. Another old comrade, who is a merchant in the town, told me that he had bought over a hundred thousand pounds of minnie balls picked up on the ground where the battle was fought. I saw a three-bushel box full in his store today. How many poor devils were killed by these would be impossible to tell. They have a neat little cemetery near the town, in which there are nine Kentuckians (Confederates) buried, some of whose names I have copied.