[82] would close, still pressing onward, unwavering, into the jaws of death.
Was Cardigan's charge of the 600 more desperate, save that his was to defeat, Mahone's to victory.
The orders of General Mahone were obeyed to the very letter. The brink of the ditch was gained before a musket was discharged. The cry ‘No quarter’ greeted us, the one volley responded, and the bayonet was plied with such irresistible vigor that success was insured within a short space of time. Men fell dead in heaps, and human gore ran in streams that made the very earth mire beneath the tread of our victorious soldiers.
The rear ditch being ours, the men mounted the rugged embankments and hurled their foes from the front line up to the very mouth of the Crater.
A clipping headed ‘A Grand Spectacle,’ in the Saturday Blade, of Chicago, Ill., October 26, 1895, says: I asked an old soldier the other day what was the most interesting scene he had ever witnessed, and his reply was:
General William Mahone and his troops on dress parade at the Battle of the Crater. It was the grandest spectacle ever seen on a battlefield. Men were falling like leaves under the raking volleys of the enemy, but there was not a break in the line that was not instantly filled up with a calmness and a precision that were sublime!
