Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 16.djvu/162

 156 Southern Historical Society Papers.

that she could not get near enough to the beach to enable us to land on terra firma. Company A had reached Cummins Point, and, with the men brought with me, I had a command of eighty or ninety. There was no prospect of getting the remainder of the regiment before the next night. This detachment was marched to Fort Wag- ner, where I reported to General Colquit, who was then in command. As I had not men enough to relieve any of the battalions or regi- ments in the fort, he ordered me to return to the sand hills, between Wagner and Gregg, and protect my command as well as I could. All that part of the island was under the enemy's fire, and their shell was continually dropping. We retired to what the soldiers called " private bomb-proofs." These were holes in the sand large enough to hold two men. There a man was safe, except from shell bursting immediately overhead or falling vertically. I did not find a " hole in the ground" very comfortable, and so Lieutenant Lesesne and I spread our blanket between two sand hills, and under the shelter of a small bush passed the balance of a very disagreeably cold night. The monitors bombarded Sumter all night. Battery Gregg, on Mor- ris Island, Fort Moultrie and the batteries on Sullivan's Island kept up the fight, and did some excellent shooting. The monitors would belch out columns of flame from their 15-inch guns in their turrets. When the shot from our batteries struck them, they would seem to be covered by sheet-lightning. Fort Wagner and the enemy's bat- teries in front exchanged shots all night, but not very rapidly.

September 2d. This morning the last parallel of the enemy, two hundred yards from Wagner, was nearly completed. Both the gar- rison and the enemy were working like beavers the former repairing damages and the latter pushing forward their trenches. The garrison kept up a slow fire. My detachment was detailed as a working party for Battery Gregg, where another gun was to be mounted. I marched them down there and turned them over to the engineer officer in charge. Captain R. Press Smith, of the regular infantry, was in command. Lieutenant Edgerton, of the same regiment, for- merly a sergeant in the Washington Light Infantry, Company B, was assisting him. The enemy poured their shell into Sumter, Wagner and Gregg all day. At dusk, as instructed, I reported with my detachment at Fort Wagner, and we commenced our tour of duty. By 10 or ii o'clock the rest of the regiment arrived. The compa- nies did not all come together, and they were stationed around the parapet as they reported, relieving a North Carolina regiment, which left the island by the same boats that brought the Twenty-fifth South