Page:Memoirs of Henry Villard, volume 2.djvu/236

 Generals Hazen and Turchin, numbering over 4000 men, and three batteries under Major Mendenhall, were ordered to report to him. The programme was to make the movement partly by water and partly by land. Fifty pontoons built for another bridge were prepared, each to carry twenty-five armed men and the rowers, together with two flat-boats holding forty and seventy-five men respectively. This flotilla would thus be manned by about 1600 men drawn from both brigades, with General Hazen in command, and was to pass down the river at night to the selected points for landing, a distance of nearly nine miles from Chattanooga. The remainder of the infantry and the artillery were to march under cover of night to the proper point on the east bank (the western front of Moccasin Point), whence the infantry was to be hurried in over the pontoons, directly after the landing of Hazen's men, while the guns remained to cover by their fire, if necessary, the operations of the joint forces. Complete surprise was, of course, the main condition of success.

General Smith invited me to accompany him on the expedition, and I gladly accepted. The preparations were pushed day and night, and with as much secrecy as possible. Even the brigade commanders learned the real purpose only the day before the expedition took place. As a number of boats had yet to be built and nearly all the oars to be made and the men instructed in rowing, it was not until the evening of the 26th that everything was ready. I was notified to join General Smith at midnight, and was promptly on hand. He kindly furnished me with a mount for the occasion. I had enjoyed a long sleep before starting and felt fresh enough for the night's adventures. We crossed over the bridge to the north side at about one o'clock, and had a good deal of difficulty in finding our way. Fortunately it did not rain, but it was very dark, and the very bad road was blocked by Turchin's command and the artillery. But we reached the landing-place of the ferry (which in ordinary times ran to the mouth of the