ding further
back, and then struck me with force enough to take my breath. That ball
had killed two men, and I preserved it with the name and date of the
battle scratched on its but slightly distorted surface.

On Tourtellotte's side a grim war comedy was enacted. The remains of two
Mississippi Regiments--the 35th and 39th of Sears' brigade, that had
charged with desperation, found themselves as the surge of battle that
broke upon the hill went back, lodged in a sheltered depression of the
north front, whence they could move neither up nor down without
concentrating upon themselves the fire of Tourtellotte's whole front.
Unable to determine what course to take, they remained where they were to
think it over, and Tourtellotte, observing their embarrassment,
thoughtfully sent a portion of the 4th Minnesota to their rescue and
invited them to come in. One field and several line officers and 80 men
with the colors of the two regiments were the reward of the Yankee
courtesy.

After the fight was over we thankfully emerged from the shambles and went
out to survey the field. The dead, the dying and the wounded lay
everywhere. The ditches immediately outside the Redoubt were crammed with
corpses. There were dead rebels within 100 feet of the work, and they were
piled in stacks near the house where they had massed for the final assault
which was never made, against the reopened artillery, and the rattle of
the Henry rifles. But the appalling center of the tragedy was the pit in
which lay the heroes of the 39th Iowa and the 7th Illinois. Such a sight
probably was never before presented to the eye of heaven. There is no
language to describe it. With all the glad reaction of feeling after the
prolonged strain of that mortal day, and the exultant surge of victory
that swelled our hearts, it was difficult to stand on the verge of that
open grave without a rush of tears to the eye and a spasm of pity
clutching at the throat. The trench was crowded with the dead, blue and
homespun, Yank and Johnny, inextricably mingled in their last ditch. Our
heroes, ordered to hold the place to the last, with supreme fidelity, had
died at their posts. As the rebel line run over them, they struck up with
their bayonets as the foe struck down, and rolling together in the
embrace of death, we found them in some cases mutually transfixed. The
theme cannot be dwelt upon.

For relief, take another one, so unique in the circumstances that I doubt
at time