On the 23rd we received two months’ pay. We now had money and could catch a little time to bet on our old familiar game called chuck-a-luck.
General Logan’s men had their tunnel underneath the “Queen of Vicksburg” completed. On the morning of the 25th, we received orders for every man to fire fifty rounds of cartridges and each battery to fire one hundred rounds, all along the entire line. Just imagine eighty thousand anxious men, standing in the rifle pits, awaiting orders and ready to charge the mighty Gibraltar of Vicksburg.
Everything was quiet and not a sound disturbed the still air. Many were thinking of home and God and wondering what was coming next. About ten o’clock we saw a cloud of black smoke go up like the upheaval of a volcano. It carried with it to the height of a mile, hundreds of tons of earth and debris and a great number of men. This was followed by a mighty shaking of the earth, and the “Queen of Vicksburg” was no more. She was up in midair with hundreds of mangled human bodies dropping back to the earth.
At this moment five hundred cannon and eighty thousand small arms opened fire, and every man yelled at the top of his voice. Just think for a moment what a panorama this must have been. In five minutes nothing could be heard except the crash and roar nor could anything be seen on account of the smoke. Sheets of flame and clouds of black smoke shot up from the mouths of those great monster guns.
After an hour of work in this awful scene of death and destruction the lines all ceased firing. A few rebels in front of us gave three cheers to let us know that they were not all dead. The destruction then continued in Logan’s division, and it lasted until after dark.
I cannot give a full account of the work of destruction that went on in that division because I was not there, and got only a brief sketch of the horrors in that awful crater. After the explosion of the fort, Logan’s men charged in and tried to make an opening in that terrible place. They fought the rebels hand to hand, and both sides used hand grenades. These caused a great destruction on both sides. The rebels were reinforced and drove our men out, capturing several prisoners.
On the 26th, we moved one section of Captain Foster’s twenty-pound Parrot guns into our rifle pits, not over one hundred yards from the main rebel forts. We had to put collars on the guns to protect the eyes of our gunners.
Hard fighting was going on between Logan’s division and the rebels. They were fighting for the possession of the crater which was blown out between the two armies. They used all kinds of devices for holding that “bone of contention.” At night General Hovey had our rifle pits extended to within forty paces of their large fort. The rebels opened on us with canister, but it took no effect as our works were too strong.
At night our pickets and the rebels stood only ten feet apart and talked to each other. When four o’clock came, the first one that got into the rifle pits fired at the other, sometimes cutting the dirt close to his heels as he went over into the ditch on his head. He then lay there panting for breath.
The rebels built a wire fence and defied us to cross it. On the night of the 28th Captain Jackson of our pioneer corps and a working squad advanced our pits as far the fence. The rebel pickets were called into the fort and several shots fired. We then sent for reinforcements. The commander of the fort called out to know who the officer was who dared to intrude on his rights. We were now within thirty feet of the fort and were lying under two big guns whose muzzles one could crawl into.