And, strange as it seemed, these were all our casualties, under that hot fire; one man, seriously, and one slightly wounded and a horse slightly hurt.
Wounding of Robert Fulton Moore
No! I forgot! There was one other casualty,—Robert Fulton Moore was mortally wounded, in the hat brim. And this gave rise to a most amusing scene. Robert Fulton was a driver to the limber of the third gun. He was a large, soft, man, and was, by no means, characterized by soldierly bearing, or warlike sentiments. On the contrary, he was something of a “butt,” and was always desperately unhappy under fire. He could dodge lower off the back of a horse at sound of a shell, than any man living. His miraculous feats, in this performance, afforded much diversion, whenever the guns went under fire, to us all, except his Sergeant, Moncure, who was very much ashamed of it. Still, in a general, feeble sort of way Robert Fulton had managed to keep up without any flagrant act of flinching from his post. On this occasion he had stood up better than usual. He stood holding his horses, and we noticed, with pleasure, that he was behaving very well under fire. But, it seems, his courage was only “hanging by the eyelids” so to speak.
Presently a piece of shell came whizzing very close to his head. It cut away part of his hat brim, and alas! this was too much! Poor Robert Fulton went all to pieces, instantly. Completely demoralized, panic-stricken and frantic with terror, he dropped his reins, and struck out wildly. It seems, he had seen Ellis, our lead driver, scooping out the hole that has been referred to, and as this was the only hole of any kind in reach, he instinctively struck for it. Ellis was lying down in it, flat on his back, with his arms stretched upward, holding his horses. Robert Fulton rounded the limber, and threw himself down with all his weight, right upon, and completely covering up, Ellis, and stuck his face in the dirt over Ellis’ shoulder, effectually pinning him down. Ellis was a fiery, ugly-tempered fellow, but as brave as Julius Cæsar, and of all men in the battery he had the greatest contempt for Moore, and especially for his present conduct. Ellis, upon finding Moore on top of him, was in a perfect blaze of fury. The breath was nearly knocked out of him by Moore’s weight, and he was mashed into the narrow hole, and embarrassed by the reins of his horses. He tried to throw Moore off, and couldn’t. Then he broke loose! He yelled, and swore, and bit, and pulled Moore’s hair, and socked his spurs into him, with both feet. He would have broken a blood vessel if McCarthy, assisted by Moncure, who had come to look after his driver, had not pulled Moore off, and taken him back to his post.
Our attention was drawn to this scene by the noise. The terrific combat going on in that hole, the sight of Ellis’ legs and arms, tossing wildly in the air, Moore not moving a muscle, but lying still, on top, the dust kicked up by the fray,—it was more than flesh and blood could stand, even under such a fire, and we could hardly work the guns for laughing. After the fight, when Moore had time to look into his injuries, he found that Ellis had nearly skinned him with his spurs. Some days after, we heard Robert Fulton exhibiting his torn hat brim to some passing acquaintance from his own neighborhood, as a trophy of his prowess in this fight. No doubt he preserves it as a sacred relic yet.
A Useful Discovery
In this fight, necessity, the mother of invention, put us up to a device that served us well here, and that we made fullest use of, in every fight we had afterwards. When we had kept up that rapid fire, with a scant gun detachment, in plowed ground, and under a hot sun, for an hour, we were nearly exhausted. After Hardy was wounded, and left us, it was still worse. The hardest labor, and what took most time, was running up the guns from the recoil. We had stopped a moment to rest, and let the gun cool a little, and were discussing the difficulties, when the idea occurred to us. There was an old rail fence near by. Somebody said “let’s get some rails and chock the wheels to keep them from running back.” This struck us all as good, and in an instant we had piled up rails behind the wheels as high as the trail would allow. The effect was, that when the gun fired it simply jerked back against this rail pile, and rested in its place, and so we were saved all the time and labor of running up. We found that we could fire three or four times as rapidly, in this way. So that a chocked gun was equal to four in a fight. We found this simple device of immense service! We were told by the knowing ones that we ran the greatest possible danger. The ordnance people said that if a gun was not allowed to recoil it would certainly burst. But we didn’t mind! A device that saved so much labor, and enabled us to deliver such an extraordinarily effective fire on the battlefield, we were bound to try. We found it acted beautifully. We then knew the guns wouldn’t burst for we had tried it.
We used it afterward in every fight. The instant we were ordered into position, two or three cannoneers would rush off and get rails, or a log or two, to chock the guns. And on two or three very desperate emergencies, during this campaign, this device enabled us to render very important service. It made a battery equal to a battalion, and a good many other batteries took it up, and used it. I believe it added greatly to the effectiveness of our artillery in the close-range fighting of this campaign.
Well! even with this relief, the labor of working our guns in this furious and prolonged fight was fearful! At last the welcome order, “Section cease firing” was given. We limbered up, and drew the guns a short distance to the side, out of the line of fire, and utterly exhausted, we cannoneers, threw ourselves right down on the plowed ground beside the guns, and slept like the dead.
In the meantime, while we had been fighting out in that field, events were taking place near us, of which we, absorbed in the work before us and deafened by the roar of our guns, had taken little notice at the time. As had been described, there was a body of woods some distance off to our right, and another, to our left. When we went into position we had not seen any of our troops, and did not know of the presence of any, near us. We thought we were without support, but as I intimated some time back, we were better off than we knew.