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 XXI

READY FOR ACTION AGAIN

This afternoon the camp of the First Division and Cadwalader Brigade was proud but saddened: proud, when the men learned that with their thirty-one hundred they had defeated fourteen thousand concealed within ditches and behind walls or massed for support, with General Santa Anna himself looking on; saddened, when they learned what the victory had cost.

"The bloodiest fight, ag'in fortifications, in American hist'ry," old Sergeant Mulligan pronounced.

General Worth had acted rather blue. Out of his thirty-one hundred he had lost one hundred and sixteen killed, six hundred and fifty-seven wounded, and eighteen missing—probably dead or wounded; total, seven hundred and thirty-one, almost a fourth of his whole number. And the list of officers was appalling: fifty-one of the one hundred and seventy had fallen.

Of the First Brigade, Lieutenant Thorn, Colonel Garland's aide-de-camp, was severely wounded; so were First Lieutenant and Captain Prince and Second Lieutenant A. B. Lincoln and Assistant Surgeon Simons, Fourth Infantry; Lieutenants Shackleford and Daniels, of the Second Artillery, were dying, Lieutenant Armstrong had been killed outright; Captain George Ayers and Lieutenant Ferry, of the Third Artillery, had been killed; Captain Anderson wounded.

In the Second Brigade brave Colonel McIntosh,