Our rifled guns had just been firing at a Federal battery which we could see, up on the hill in front of us. Watching the effect of the shots, we saw one of the caissons blown up, and a gun disabled, and soon confusion. Somebody remarked, “how easy it would be to take that battery, if any of our infantry were in reach.” Just then, we heard loud cheering, which sounded to us, to be up in the woods, on our left, where Hill’s men were. Someone instantly cried out, “There it goes now! Hill’s men are going to take those guns.” We eagerly gathered at the works, some distance to the left of our guns, where we could see better, and stood gazing up at the edge of the field, expecting every moment to see Hill’s troops burst out of the woods, and rush upon these guns. Our attention was absorbed, off there, when, all of a sudden, one of our fellows who happened to glance the other way, yelled, “Good heavens! look out on the right.” We all looked! There, pouring out of the woods, yelling like mad men, came the Federal infantry, fast as they could run, rushing straight upon our line. The whole field was blue with them! When we first saw them, the foremost were already within one hundred yards of our works, and aiming for a point about two hundred yards to our right. The breath was about knocked out of us by the suddenness of the surprise! It was not Hill’s men charging them, but these fellows charging us,—whose yells we had heard, and here they were, right upon us! In two jumps we were at our gun. We had to turn it more to the right, and, with the first shot, blow away a light traverse, which was higher than the level of the gun, before we could bear on their columns. We sent two or three canisters tearing through their ranks; the Texans were blazing away, but, they had got too close to be stopped. The next instant, they surged over our works like a great blue wave, and were inside.
“Texas Will Never Forget Virginia”
So sudden was the surprise that they bayonetted two of the Texan infantry, asleep upon the ground. Soon as they got over they turned, and began to sweep down the works, on the inside, upon our guns. As the Texans forced to retire streamed past our guns, leaving us all alone and unsupported to face the enemy, Lieutenant Anderson said, “Men, the road is only a little way back of us; we must stay here, and stop these people, or the Army is cut in two. Run the guns back and open on them. We can hold them until help comes.” We turned the guns round so as to command the approaching enemy, and chocked them with rails; several men snatched up the pile of ammunition, and piled it down before the guns in their new place, then we opened, with double canister.
If ever two guns were worked for all they were worth, those were! I don’t believe any two guns, in the same time, ever fired as many shots as those two “Napoleons” did. We kept them just spouting canister! Several times three canisters were fired. Billy White, “No. 2,” had only to reach down for them, and he would have loaded the guns to the muzzle if “No. 1” had given him time. The gun got so hot that, once, in jumping in to put in the friction primer, the back of my left hand touched it, and the skin was nearly taken off. The sponge was entirely worn off the rammer, so “No. 1” stopped sponging out the gun, and only rammed shot home. We fired so fast that the powder did not have time to ignite in the gun. After firing the gun, “No. 4” could hardly get the “primer” in before the gun was loaded, and ready to fire again. So it went on! It was fast and furious work! And the bullets sounded like bees buzzing above our heads.
I felt a sharp pain, then a numbness in my right hand. I glanced at it, and saw that the back of it was cut open, and bleeding. I had to pull the lanyard with my left hand the rest of the fight. I supposed a bullet had done it, but was disgusted to see blood on one of the rails, which chocked our gun, and find that this rail had worked loose, and, when struck by the recoiling gun wheel, had flown round and struck my hand, and disabled it. So, it was not an “honorable” wound, even though received in battle, as it was not done by a missile of the enemy.
Minute after minute, this hot work went on. The enemy, in coming over our works, and sweeping around, was thrown into disorder, so that they advanced on us in a confused mass.
In this mass our canister was doing deadly work, cutting lanes in every direction. Still on they came; getting slower in their advance as the canister constantly swept away the foremost men. The men in front began to flinch, they were within thirty yards of us,—firing wildly now. One good rush! and their bayonets would have silenced our guns! But they could not face that hail of death any longer; they could not make that rush! They began to give back from our muzzles.
At that moment, the Texans having rallied under the bank, forty yards to our right, and rear, came leaping like tigers upon their flank. The Texans were perfectly furious! It was the first time during the whole war that they had been forced from a position, under fire, and they were mad enough to eat those people up. A screaming yell burst out, a terrific outbreak of musketry, a rush, with the bayonets, and the inside of our work was clear of all, save the many dead, and wounded, and six hundred prisoners.
We ran our gun instantly back to its place, in the works, and got several shots into the flying mob, outside.
Then all was gone, and we were ready to drop in our tracks, with the exhausting work of the ten minutes that we had held the foe at bay.