ust in front, and some twenty feet above the ground,
tearing off a heavy fragment, slightly larger than a man's forearm,
which came down with force, the end cutting through Hargroves' hat on
his forehead and to the skull, a gash two inches long. Maxwell said:
"Lieut., they are cutting at us close," still looking to the front.
Hargrove said: "Well, they got me." Maxwell turned around and there
stooped Hargrove, hat on ground, and his hands to his head, with blood
gushing through his fingers all down over him. He was much stunned with
the blow, but when Maxwell spread the lips of the wound, and the blood
ran out, the solid skull of his forehead showed uncrutched.
Nevertheless the blow threatened concussion of the brain, and he was
sent home for several weeks. Dr. N. P. Marlowe, then surgeon with
Wheeler's corps taking him in his own ambulance to the Hospital, after
dressing his wound.
The enemy crossing in force, lower down the river, our battery was
retired from this position and placed on the main line of defense
northeast of Atlanta, and was soon faced by the enemy again, after the
battle of Peachtree Creek, with his entrenchments forming quite an
angle in our front, some 800 yards away, but his lines stretched from
that angle almost perpendicularly away from us toward his left.
On July 22nd, Hardee's corps of Confederates attacked Sherman's left
and drove it for a long distance back toward his center. The right of
this fleeing corps came into our range making for the protection of
their works at this angle and Lumsden's guns shelled them just in front
of their own works as they reached them, we firing over the heads of
the Georgia militia, who were pushed forward across the valley as if to
join in an assault, but were soon returned to their works after
considerable loss.
Seeing these old citizens wounded and dying struck us with sympathy,
with somewhat of the same feelings we might have experienced at seeing
a lot of women sacrificed. They started in the charge, had withdrawn to
the trenches again. We were accustomed to that with regular soldiers,
but the sacrifice of these old citizens affected us to an unusual
degree.
Being relieved from this position, by a battery attached to an infantry
brigade that now occupied these trenches, we were sent to the rear and
parked near a stream south of Atlanta to wash up clothing and rest a
bit. But before our washing was dry, orders came to rush the battery to
a position
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