While resting on this hillside, I saw a courier dash up to our
commanding general, B. F. Cheatham, and the word, "Attention!" was given.
I knew then that we would soon be in action. Forward, march. We passed
over the hill and through a little skirt of woods.
The enemy were fortified right across the Franklin pike, in the suburbs
of the town. Right here in these woods a detail of skirmishers was
called for. Our regiment was detailed. We deployed as skirmishers,
firing as we advanced on the left of the turnpike road. If I had not
been a skirmisher on that day, I would not have been writing this today,
in the year of our Lord 1882.
It was four o'clock on that dark and dismal December day when the line of
battle was formed, and those devoted heroes were ordered forward, to
"Strike for their altars and their fires,
For the green graves of their sires,
For God and their native land."
As they marched on down through an open field toward the rampart of blood
and death, the Federal batteries began to open and mow down and gather
into the garner of death, as brave, and good, and pure spirits as the
world ever saw. The twilight of evening had begun to gather as a
precursor of the coming blackness of midnight darkness that was to
envelop a scene so sickening and horrible that it is impossible for me to
describe it.
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