A NIGHT IN THE EIGHTEENTH N. H. VOLS. 147
who have heard it can realize what a shock it gives one, and especially when half asleep. The commands followed fast, one after another, from gruff voices. All out ! Every man to his post ! Fall into line, men ! Steady there ! Take good aim ! Fire low ! The work of death had l^egun in earnest in less time than it takes to write it. In the confusion and darkness I snatched my boots, and hastily drew them on. I noticed something did not feel just right, but did not mistrust what it was, till Capt. Gile got hold of his sword and belt, and started for the door, then with one of my legs jerked suddenly into the air, the fact flashed across my mind that the small strap of his belt was under my foot, and tightly in my boot. The position is easier imagined than de- scribed. Capt. Gile, a man of two hundred pounds, had gone the length of his rope, wildly rushing for the head of his company, and I, over six feet tall, with one leg outstretched, and my foot as high as the Captain's head. All this had it been a daylight scene, might have furnished a cut for Harper's or a comic almanac. Before I started in that style however, the Captain stopped. He did not go to the head of his company at once. He had to wait my mo- tion, that time. Going to battle with so many drawbacks, was not an easy task. Before he could be released, I had to coolly sit down on the ground and pull off my boot. Notwithstanding the shot and shell were screeching through the air in every direction, and tearing up the earth all around, and the heavens were ablaze with deadly missiles, and the deafening sounds of booming cannon and bursting shell, seemed to make the whole earth rock, yet amid this all, Capt. Gile and I had a hearty laugh at the peculiar manner of our attachment in battle.
We lost that night some brave men, among them Maj. Brown, of Fisherville, instantly killed. Our good Col. J. M. Clough, was wounded in the face by a bursting shell, Capt. Greenough was wounded in the shoulder. The firing was pronounced by those outside as more severe than any they had witnessed dur- ing the war. Numerous forts on the hills in our rear, threw all their shot and shell directly over our heads into the rebel Hues, making sad havoc among our butternut-clothed opponents, and in turn their shot and shell fell thick and heavy all around us. So that it was difficult for any living person to feel in the darkness that anyone besides himself had been left alive.
Our guards in the trenches between the two lines hugged the ground in terror, not daring to move, and some of them, poor men, were killed in that position. The men and officers of the eighteenth did themselves great credit in that awful night, displaying remarkable courage and keeping up a continu- ous roar of musketry during the hours of the engagement. The rebels undertook several times to make a charge, but it was too hot for them and they failed.
Years have intervened, yet a rehearsal of the conflict at Fort Sieadman on the night of March 24, 1865, will touch some tender heart and turn the thoughts to that little grass-grown mound, which marks the spot where a loved one rests.
New Hampshire's sons saved the fort that night nearest the rebel lines, and but a few days after, Gen. Grant ordered the fire to be opened at an early hour all along his fifty miles of works, and from away above Richmond and away below and around Petersburgh, the last great conflict commenced ; all day long it raged, and when the sun went down, with it went the last hope of the Southern Confederacy, for on the morrow their whole army under Lee, were on the re- treat, never again to make a successful stand.
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