we were protected. If daylight found us unfortified
we couldn't stay there, so we had better go to throwing dirt.

=Against Heavy Odds at "Fort Dodge"=

Here was nice news! Our two Napoleons, right under the muzzles of twelve
or more rifled cannon, and six twenty-pounder Parrotts, and with no
works! This was pleasant advice to tired and sleepy men, who wanted to
go to bed. But such were the facts, and as we never had left a position
under fire, and had come to stay, and were _certainly going_ to stay,
we _went_ to throwing dirt.

We went to work, to raise and thicken the little bank already there, in
front of our gun, and to build a short "traverse" to the right, for
protection from enfilade fire. We worked all night, six of us, and by
morning we had a slight and rough artillery work, with an embrasure for
the gun; the whole thing about four feet high, and two and one-half feet
thick, at the top. It was the best that could be done by six, tired, and
hungry fellows, all young boys, working with two picks and three shovels
through a short night. Such as it was, we fought behind it, all through
the Spottsylvania battles, and it stood some heavy battering. This gem
of engineering skill,--by reason of the pretty constant courtesies we
felt it polite to pay to the unceasing attentions of our friends, the
enemy, for the next six days, in the shape of shells and bullets, we
called "Fort _Dodge_."

Just here, I take occasion to correct a very wrong impression about the
field works, the "Army of Northern Virginia" fought behind, in this
campaign. All the Federal writers who have written about these battles,
speak of our works as "formidable earthworks," "powerful
fortifications," "impregnable lines;" such works as _no troops_ could be
expected _to take_, and any troops could be expected _to hold_.

Now about the parts of the line distant from us, I couldn't speak so
certainly, though I am sure they were all very much the same, but about
the works all along _our part_ of the line I can speak with exactness
and certainty. I saw them, I helped, with my own hands, to make them. I
fought behind them. I was often on top of them, and both sides of them.
I know all about them. I got a good deal of the mud off them on
me,--(not for purposes of personal fortification, however).

Our "works" were, a single line of earth, about four feet high, and
three to five feet thick. It had no ditch or obstructions in front. It
was nothing more