" That is what the gallant old Colonel said.
Advancing a little further on, we saw General Albert Sidney Johnson
surrounded by his staff and Governor Harris, of Tennessee. We saw some
little commotion among those who surrounded him, but we did not know at
the time that he was dead. The fact was kept from the troops.
About noon a courier dashed up and ordered us to go forward and support
General Bragg's center. We had to pass over the ground where troops had
been fighting all day.
I had heard and read of battlefields, seen pictures of battlefields,
of horses and men, of cannon and wagons, all jumbled together, while the
ground was strewn with dead and dying and wounded, but I must confess
that I never realized the "pomp and circumstance" of the thing called
glorious war until I saw this. Men were lying in every conceivable
position; the dead lying with their eyes wide open, the wounded begging
piteously for help, and some waving their hats and shouting to us to go
forward. It all seemed to me a dream; I seemed to be in a sort of haze,
when siz, siz, siz, the minnie balls from the Yankee line began to
whistle around our ears, and I thought of the Irishman when he said,
"Sure enough, those fellows are shooting bullets!"
Down would drop first one fellow and then another, either killed or
wounded, when we were ordered to charge bayonets.
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