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[108] were two hundred-pounders, and seventeen one hundred-pounders, and in only a single instance was injury done to the artillerists. The amount of labor performed during the siege operations was enormous. I have no means of giving that done by the whole army, and can only speak of my own immediate command. The little brigade which I had the honor to command, and which never had much over one thousand men for detail, performed nearly an hundred thousand days and nights of duty. The trenches, parallels, splinter-proofs and batteries constructed measured about eight miles in length. Think of the days and nights of toil, and labor, and danger, that fashioned these eight miles of moving sand into strong defenses, and how often their earthen walls were bathed in the blood of the trusty soldier!

Numerous interesting incidents happened during the siege. The night we broke ground to erect a heavy battery between Wagner and Gregg there occurred an event which seemed to be a Providential punishment of those who avoided their duty. The working party was in charge of Captain Pratt, of the Fifty-fifth Massachusetts Volunteers. After he had placed the first relief on duty he walked out to the beach; he saw there two soldiers sitting in a large hole made by one of the enemy's shells. Upon being asked who they were, they replied that they belonged to the second relief. He suspected they were shirking duty, and kept them in mind. The Captain again walked out to the beach, after the second relief had been placed on duty, and found the same men sitting in the shell hole, who failed to recognize him in the dark. He repeated his inquiry, and was told they belonged to the first relief that had just come off duty. Almost at the same moment he looked across the harbor toward Fort Moultrie, for he was on the beach facing it, and saw a mortar shell rise from the fort. Knowing the range was taken for his working party, he stepped to one side and watched the flight of this messenger of death. He saw it rise high in the air; the fuse twinkling like a moving star; describe the usual curve, and fall to the earth a short distance from him. Upon going to the spot he found that it had fallen into the hole where the two were sitting and killed them both. They died shirking their duty, with a lie on their lips.

Soon after we took Battery Gregg there happened a very sad accident. A captain of a Maine regiment, who was a member of a court-martial, and not engaged in the operations, went to the front one afternoon to have a good view of Charleston. He stood alone on the top of the bomb-proof at Gregg, in plain sight of the enemy's batteries on James Island, a mile and a half distant. A rebel

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