into action where the infantry was fighting.
In fact, the battle of The Wilderness was almost exclusively an
_Infantry_ fight. But few cannon shots were heard at all during the day;
the guns could not be gotten through the thickets. We heard, at the
time, that we had only been able to put in two guns, and the Federals,
three, and that our people had taken two of them, and the other was
withdrawn. Certainly we hardly heard a single shot during most of the
fight. But we didn't know at the time the exemption we were to enjoy. It
was a strange and unwonted sight, all those guns, around us, idle, with
a battle going on. For the way General Lee fought his artillery was a
caution to cannoneers. He always put them in, everywhere, and made the
fullest use of them. We always expected, and we always got, our full
share of any fighting that was going on. And to be idle here, while the
musketry was rolling, was entirely a novel sensation. We were under a
dropping fire, and we expected to go in every moment. A position which
every old soldier will recognize as more trying than being in the thick
of a fight. It was very far from soothing.

When we had been waiting here a few minutes, Dr. Newton, since the Rev.
John B. Newton of Monumental Church, Richmond, Va., afterwards Bishop
Coadjutor of Virginia, but then the surgeon of the 40th Virginia
Infantry, rode by our guns, and recognizing several of us, boys, his
kinsmen, stopped to speak to us. After a few kind words, as he shook
hands with us very warmly at parting, he pointed to his field hospital,
hard by, and very blandly said, "Boys, I'll be right here, and I will be
glad to do anything for you in my line." To fellows going, as we
thought, right into battle, this was about the last kind of talk we
wanted to hear. A doctor's offer of service in our situation, was full
of ghastly suggestions. So his well-meaning proffer was met with
opprobrious epithets, and indignant defiance. It was shouted to him in
vigorous Anglo-Saxon, what we thought of doctors anyhow, and that if he
didn't look sharp we'd fix him so he would need a doctor, himself, to
patch him up. The Doctor rode off laughing at the storm his friendly
remarks had raised. Never was a kind offer more ungraciously received. I
suppose, however, if any of us had got hurt just then, we would have
been glad enough to fall in with the Doctor, and to have his skillful
care. Fact is, soldiers are very like citizens--set light by the do