There was now an interval of comparative quiet. We could walk around, and talk, and look about us, a little. Now and then a bullet struck the ground close to us, and presently one of the infantry was struck slightly. It was plain that a concealed sharp-shooter had our range, and we began to watch for him. Soon one of us caught a glimpse of him; he was up a tree some distance out in front, and he would cautiously edge around the trunk and fire, dodging back behind the trunk to load again. One of the Texans went over the works, and stole from stump to stump off toward the left, and for some time was out of our sight. Presently, we saw that sharp-shooter slyly stealing around the tree, and raise his rifle. The next instant, we saw a puff of smoke from a bush, off to the left, and that sharp-shooter came plunging down, headforemost out of the tree, dead as Hector. Our man had crept round so that when the Federal slid around the tree, he exposed his body, and the Texan shot him.
Robert Stiles, the Adjutant of the Battalion, who had been, until lately, a member of our Battery, and was very devoted to it, and his comrades in it, had come to the lines to see how we were getting on, and gave us news of other parts of the line. He, Beau Barnes, and others of us were standing by our guns, talking, when a twenty pounder Parrott shell came grazing just over our guns, passed on, and about forty yards behind us struck a pine tree, about two and a half to three feet in diameter. The shell had turned. It struck that big tree sideways, and cut it entirely off, and threw it from the stump. It fell in an upright position, struck the ground, stood, for an instant, and then, came crashing down. It was a very creepy suggestion of what that shell might have done to one of us. A few moments after another struck the ground right by us and ricochetted. After it passed us, as was frequently the case, we caught sight of it, and followed its upward flight until it seemed to be going straight up to the sky. Stiles said “There it goes as though flung by the hand of a giant.” Beau Barnes, who was not poetical, exclaimed, “Giant be darned; there ain’t any giant can fling ’em like that.” He was right!
Strange how the most trivial incidents keep their place in the memory, along with the great events, amidst which they occurred! I remember the fall of that tree, and the remark about that shell, and a small piece of pork which an Arkansas soldier gave me, and which, in jumping to the guns, I dropped into a mudhole, and never found again, though I fished for it diligently in the muddy water, and a pig, which was calmly rooting around near our guns, under fire, and which we watched, hoping he would be hit, so that we could get his meat, before the infantry did, to satisfy our wolfish hunger, just as distinctly as the several fierce battles which were fought that day.
About five o’clock the Federal guns on the hill in our front broke out again into a furious fire. It was a warning! We knew it meant that the infantry were about to charge again. We got to our guns, and the Texans stood to their arms. It seems that the balance of Hancock’s Corps had got up, and now, with Warren’s, and part of Sedgwick’s Corps, formed in our front, Grant was going to make the supreme effort of the day, to break our line.
What we saw was that far down in the woods, heavy columns of men were moving; the woods seemed to be full of them. The pickets, and our guns opened on them at once. The next moment they appeared, three heavy lines one close behind the other. As they reached the edge of the woods, our lines were blazing with fire. But on they came! The first line was cut to pieces, only to have its place taken by the next, and then, the next. Closer and closer to our guns they pressed their bloody way, until they were within fifty yards of us. Heavens! how those men did strive, and strain to make their way against that tempest of bullets and canister! It was too much for man to do! They stopped and stayed there, and fired and shouted, under our withering fire. The carnage was fearful. Their men were being butchered! Their lines had all fallen into utter confusion. They could not come on! Despair suddenly seized them! The next moment a panic stricken cloud of fugitives was fast vanishing from our view, and the ground over which they had charged was blue with corpses, and red with blood.
Eggleston’s Heroic Death
Just here, we of the “Howitzer” suffered our first, and only, loss in this day’s fighting. Cary Eggleston, “No. 1” at third gun, had his arm shattered, and almost cut away from his body, by a fragment of shell. He quietly handed his rammer to John Ayres, who that instant came up to the gun, and said, “Here Johnny, you take it and go ahead!” Then, gripping his arm with his other hand, partly to stop the fast flowing blood, he turned to his comrades, and said in his jocular way, “Boys, I can never handle a sponge-staff any more. I reckon I’ll have to go to teaching school.” Then he stood a while, looking at the men working the gun. They urged him to go to the rear; he would not for a while. When he consented to go, they wanted to send a man with him, but he refused, and walked off by himself. As he passed back an infantry officer, seeing what an awful wound he had, and the streaming blood, insisted that one of the men should go and help him to the hospital. “No,” he said; “I’m all right, and you haven’t got any men to spare from here.” So, holding his own arm, and compressing the artery with his thumb, he got to the hospital.
His arm was amputated, and a few days after, as the battery passed through Spottsylvania Court House, we went by the Court House building, used as a hospital, where he lay on the floor, and bade him “good-bye.” He was just as cheerful, and bright, as ever, and full of eager interest in all that was going on. Said “Since he had time to think about it, he believed he could handle a sponge-staff with one hand; was going to practice it soon as he could get up, and would be back at his post before long.” The next day, the brave young fellow died. The “Howitzers” will always remember him tenderly. No braver, cooler warrior ever lived! Always bright, full of fun in camp, and on the march, he was at the gun in action, the best “No. 1” I ever saw. One of the few men I ever knew who really seemed to enjoy a fight. His bearing, when he was wounded, was simply heroic. No wounded knight ever passed off his last battlefield in nobler sort. All honor to his memory!
John Ayres, the fellow to whom Cary Eggleston handed his rammer, was at his home in Buckingham County, Virginia, on furlough, when we started on the campaign. Off in the remote country, he didn’t hear of our movements for several days. The moment he heard it, off he started, walked thirteen miles to the James River Canal boat; got to Richmond, came up to Louisa County on the Central Railroad, got off and walked twenty-three miles across country, guided by the sound of the battle, and reached his gun just in time to take Eggleston’s place as “No. 1” and finish the fight.
When the enemy had thus broken in such utter rout, and with such fearful losses, we did hope they would let us alone, for this day at least. We were wet, and hungry, and nearly worn out working the gun, off and on all day, and it was late in the afternoon. For an hour or more things were quiet; the woods in front seemed deserted and still; the Texans were lying stretched out on the ground, all along the line; many of them asleep. We cannoneers were wearily sitting about the guns, wishing to gracious we had something to eat, and could go to bed, even if the bed were only one blanket, on the wet ground.