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the ravines to the right and left.
And now the enemy had it all their own way; safe behind their works, they took deliberate aim at every man in that exposed position who showed signs of life.
Company F was in the direct line of fire, down the road from the works, and it seemed a miracle that but few were wounded.
Tucker was the first on the list.
He was struck by a ball in the left shoulder; and, after being helped into a ravine a few rods to the rear, remained there for two hours before it was possible to get a stretcher so far to the front to convey him to the field hospital.
His nearest comrades meanwhile endeavored to make his last hours as easy as possible.
Upon the surgeon's examination it was found that the ball had glanced inward from the shoulder-blade to the lungs, and no care could save or help him. He died in an hour after he was brought in; dying as quietly as if falling asleep.
In answer to a comrade he said that his hurt was very painful; yet from beginning to end there was not a groan, not a murmur.
A peculiar coincidence of dates should be here mentioned.
On the 3d of March previous, the company to which he belonged wished to send a letter of condolence to the family of their former First
Sergeant, afterwards
Sergeant-Major, then just deceased.
Tucker was on the committee, and not knowing that another member was then writing the letter, wrote a hurried draft for one in his diary, taking the precaution to write on pages several months ahead.
After his death, his friends were astonished, when reading his daily notes, written up to the night before the battle, to find upon turning the leaf that his own hand had unintentionally inserted an obituary most appropriate for himself, under the date of May 27, speaking in warm praise of ‘his worth as a friend, his excellence as a soldier,’ and expressing ‘the hope that his example of cheerful endurance of the discomforts of a soldier's life and faithful performance of a soldier's duty may not be lost upon us.’
The following extract from a letter written by a comrade to the Cambridge Chronicle, met a heartfelt response from all who knew him, either in the regiment or at home.
Our first attack upon Port Hudson cost us the life of one well
