of every
intelligent soldier in our beaten column. And yet it goes to show
how little the common soldier knew of the actual situation. We did
not know then that this line was the last line of battle of the
"Fighting Fourth Division" under General Hurlbut; that on its right
was the division of McClernand, the Fort Donelson boys; that on its
right, at right angles to it, and, as it were, the refused wing of
the army, was glorious old Sherman, hanging on with a bulldog grip
to the road across Snake Creek from Crump's Landing by which Lew
Wallace was coming with 5,000 men. In other words, we still had an
unbroken line confronting the enemy, made up of men who were not
yet ready, by any manner of means, to give up that they were
whipped. Nor did we know then that our retreating mass consisted
only of some regiments of Hurlbut's division, and some other
isolated commands, who had not been duly notified of the recession
of Hurlbut and of his falling back to form a new line, and thereby
came very near sharing the fate of Prentiss' men and being marched
to the rear as prisoners of war. Speaking for myself, it was twenty
years after the battle before I found these things out, yet they
are true, just as much so as the fact that the sun rose yesterday
morning. Well, we filed through Hurlbut's line, halted, re-formed,
and faced to the front once more. We were put in place a short
distance in the rear of Hurlbut, as a support to some heavy guns.
It must have been about five o'clock now. Suddenly, on the extreme
left, and just a little above the landing, came a deafening
explosion that fairly shook the ground beneath our feet, followed
by others in quick and regular succession. The look of wonder and
inquiry that the soldiers' faces wore for a moment disappeared for
one of joy and exultation as it flashed across our minds that the
gunboats had at last joined hands in the dance, and were pitching
big twenty-pound Parrott shells up the ravine in front of Hurlbut,
to the terror and discomfiture of our adversaries.

The last place my regiment assumed was close to the road coming up
from the landing. As we were lying there I heard the strains of
martial music and saw a body of men marching by the flank up the
road. I slipped out of ranks and walked out to the side of the road
to see what troops the