And now the fun began, and soon “grew fast and furious.” Over in the Federal lines, taken by surprise, all was confusion, worse confounded. We could see men running wildly about, teamsters, jumping into the saddle, and frantically lashing their horses,—wagons, ambulances, ordnance carts, battery forges, tearing furiously, in every direction. Several vehicles upset, and many teams, maddened by the lash, and the confusion, and bursting shells, dashing away uncontrollable. We saw one wagon, flying like the wind, strike a stump, and thrown, team and all, a perfect wreck, on top of a low rail fence, crushing it down, and rolling over it.
This was the only time I ever saw a big army wagon, and team, thrown over a fence.
All that lively time they were having over among the enemy was very amusing to us; we were highly delighted, and enjoyed it very much. Laughter, and jocular remarks on the scene were heard all about, as we worked the gun, and we did our best to keep up the show.
Meanwhile, we were not deceived for a moment. Wild and furious as was the confusion, and running, over the way, we knew, well, it was the wagoners and “bomb-proof” people, who were doing the running, and stirring up the confusion. We knew they were not all running away. We had seen a good deal of artillery in that field, and we knew that we should soon hear from them. And we were not mistaken!
In a few minutes the sound of our guns was suddenly varied by a sharp, venomous screech, clap of thunder, right over our heads, followed by a ripping, tearing, splitting crash, that filled the air; a regular blood freezer. We knew that sound! It was a bursting Parrott shell from a Federal gun! And they had the range.
The enemy had run out about eighteen, or twenty guns, and they let in, mad as hornets. Another shell, and another, and another, came screaming over us. Then they began to swarm; the air seemed full of them,—bursting shells, jagged fragments, balls out of case-shot,—it sounded like a thousand devils, shrieking in the air all about us. Then, the roaring of our guns, the heavy smoke, the sulphurous smell, the shaking of the ground under the thunder of the guns,—it was a fit place for devils to shriek in.
And how hot it was! Twenty guns, in full fire, can make it hot at the foot of the North Pole, and this was not the North Pole! quite the reverse. In addition to the battle heat, the sun was pouring down, hot as blazes; and the labor of working a rapidly firing “Napoleon” gun, with four men, in deeply plowed ground, and the strong excitement of battle—altogether, it was the hottest place I ever saw, or hope I shall ever see, in this world, or in the world to come. It nearly melted the marrow in our bones!
A persimmon sapling stood near our gun. It was trimmed, and chipped down, twig by twig, and limb by limb, by pieces of shell, until it was a lot of scraps scattered over the ground. Sam Vaden, as he passed me, with a shell, said “Dame, just look back over this field behind us. A mosquito couldn’t fly across that field without getting hit.” It looked so! The dirt was being knocked up, wherever you looked, literally, by shower of balls, and shell fragments. It had the appearance of hail striking on the surface of water, only it wasn’t cold.
Well! for three mortal hours this battle raged. They hammered us, and we hammered them. Occasionally, we saw a Federal caisson blown up, which refreshed us, and several of their guns ceased firing—disabled or cannoneers cleared out, we thought—and this refreshed us. We wished they would all blow up, and stop shooting.
After we had been under fire sometime, with nobody hurt as yet, a case-shot burst in front of us, and Hardy, who had just brought up a shell, and was standing right by me, said, in his usual deliberate way, “Dame, I’m hit, and hit very hard, I am afraid.” “Where are you hit?” I asked. He said, “I’m shot through the thigh, and the leg is numbed.” I fired the gun, and jumped down to see what I could do for him. I found the place, and it looked ugly. There was a clean-cut hole right through his pants, to the thickest part of the thigh. I put my finger into the hole, and tore away the cloth to get at the wound, and found to my great, and his greater delight, that the ball had struck, and glanced. It had made a long black bruise and the pain was much greater than if it had gone through the leg. It had struck the great mass of muscle on the outer thigh, and the leg was, for the time, paralyzed and stiff as a poker. He was completely disabled. I said, “Bill, you must get right away from here.” “But I can’t walk a step.” “Well crawl off on your hands and your good foot, not a man could leave the gun, to help you, and go out to the side so as to get soonest from under fire.” So the poor fellow hobbled off, as best he could, all alone, amidst the laughter of the fellows at his novel locomotion. We could see the bullets knocking up the dirt all around him, as he went slowly “hopping the clods” across the plowed fields. But he got off all right. Shortly after Hardy was struck, Charley Pleasants, of Richmond No. ———, at the Third gun, was shot through the thigh. A long and tedious wound which kept him disabled some months. Bill Hardy was back to duty in a day or so. One of the horses, the off horse of the wheel team of our limber, was hit, also. A piece of shell went into his head, between the right eye and ear, cutting the brow band of the bridle. The old horse, a character in the Battery, didn’t seem to mind it; and he wore that piece of shell, in his head, until the end of the war.