We passed over a hill and down into a valley being under the muzzles of
this rampart of death. We had been charging and running, and had stopped
to catch our breath right under their reserve and main line of battle.
When General George Maney said, "Soldiers, you are ordered to go forward
and charge that battery. When you start upon the charge I want you to go,
as it were, upon the wings of the wind. Shoot down and bayonet the
cannoneers, and take their guns at all hazards." Old Pat Cleburne
thought he had better put in a word to his soldiers. He says, "You hear
what General Maney says, boys. If they don't take it, by the eternal God,
you have got to take it!" I heard an Irishman of the "bloody Tinth,"
and a "darn good regiment, be jabbers," speak up, and say, "Faith,
gineral, we'll take up a collection and buy you a batthery, be Jasus."
About this time our regiment had re-formed, and had got their breath,
and the order was given to charge, and take their guns even at the point
of the bayonet. We rushed forward up the steep hill sides, the seething
fires from ten thousand muskets and small arms, and forty pieces of
cannon hurled right into our very faces, scorching and burning our
clothes, and hands, and faces from their rapid discharges, and piling the
ground with our dead and wounded almost in heaps.
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