ran everywhere. With these and the regular breastworks the ground was
completely honeycombed. In front of our breastwork was a ditch, an abatis
and a line of barbed wire entanglement. The Confederate and our lines were
so near together that every possible thing was resorted to, to prevent
being surprised or to check an advancing line of battle. A view across the
field was peculiar, not a man could be seen. Lines of abatis, barbed-wire
fences, piles of earth with the black noses of cannon projecting out
between them, was about all one could see. In the course of ten days
after our lines were established we were pretty well dug in, so the
ordinary rifle of the infantry, the field artillery and even the siege
guns, did not disturb us much. The mortars, however, we did not like; the
shells from them, we had not, at the time I was wounded, learned to avoid.
Later on, bomb proofs were built back of the second line; these the boys
could get into when off duty and be protected. Life in the trenches was
dreary and trying, although in ways interesting. The Johnnies did not keep
up a continuous fire, but once in a while they would throw over a dozen or
twenty shells, apparently to stir us up to see how we liked it.

One day, four of the boys in the second line were sitting on a blanket
playing pitch, when, with a terrific whiz and shriek, down came a mortar
shell and buried itself in the earth within three feet of one of them. The
way those boys rolled and tumbled over each other to get out of the way of
that shell, was interesting to see, but it only gave them a start; it did
not burst and no one was hurt.

Weren't we indignant one noon? The cook had just brought up from the rear
a kettle full of fine smoking hot baked beans. He had just set them down
and stepped back a pace or two, the boys were all skurrying around
getting their plates so no one was very near, a shell came down and burst
right beside that kettle of beans and knocked it all to atoms. One boy who
was some ten or twelve feet away was hit in the side by a piece of the
shell. It cut a groove out of his side as clean as a gouge cuts a groove
from a piece of wood. An amusing thing happened the other night over a
little way to our left where they were using pack mules for working
squads. A mule loaded and bristling with shovels, picks and axes, broke
loose from his company and, with fearful clatter, went charging fearless
and alone. The Rebs, believing they were being