That ‘Rebel Yell.’
Onward we charge, the shell is screaming and bursting, and the rifle balls whistling and spattering through and around us—that yell, that glorious old ‘Rebel Yell’ ringing in my ears.
With that eager, fiery, exulting feeling, which only just such a situation can produce—almost over the low-land, within about 40 feet of the enemy—our lines went forward.
The enemy's lines appeared to waver and success was almost in hand, when a minie ball struck me square in front in my lower neck in that little V in the breastbone and passed back into the muscles in front of the backbone, where it has lodged to this day.
As our column came up and passed me, some of our men caught me as I was falling off of my horse, and straighteing me out on the
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ground, supposedly to die. The men, charging on, gallantly drove the enemy from their position, routed, and I was afterwards told that this was the last charge made by our forces, supposing them too badly routed to make another stand.
That ball, of course, ended my personal participation in that battle, and I knew nothing personally of
Sheridan's rally and afternoon attack, except in the finale.
I was picked up on a stretcher, taken to the field hospital, where I was laid on the ground, and a knapsack under my head, until the surgeons came to me.
Dr. Sutton,
Dr. Morton, and two or three more.
They looked at the wound, ran their fingers into it, and, as they afterwards told me, felt the ball lodged in the muscles in front of the backbone, and seeing that the ball had abraided the main artery of the neck, from which I was bleeding like a hog, they concluded it would surely kill me to cut for the ball, and believing I would die anyway, just bound me up.
