Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Three).djvu/115

 those divisions, between Orchard Knob and the Tennessee River, connecting on my right with General Wood, and on my left with the second division of our Corps. “Now is the time,” said the voice within. In deploying my command and making the prescribed connection I had no difficulty—only a slight skirmish fire, the enemy readily yielding when I pushed my skirmishers as far ahead as Citico Creek. But there was a rebel battery of artillery placed on the slope of Missionary Ridge opposite Orchard Knob, invisible to us on account of the woods, which threw shells at us, and apparently had a correct range. Shells would come over to us from it in slow order, probably about two a minute. A practiced ear could gauge their course in coming rather accurately by their whirring noise. Having made my alignment with the neighboring divisions on the right and left, I was halting on horseback with my staff, between my skirmishers and my line of battle, in momentary expectation of further orders, when I heard a shell, as I judged, coming straight towards me. “This is the one,” I said to myself. The few moments I heard it come seemed very long. It did strike the ground under my horse, causing the animal to give a jump, broke the forelegs of the horse of one of my orderlies immediately behind me, and then struck an embankment about twenty yards in rear of me, and exploded, without hurting anyone. The effect was electric. The voice within me said: “This was the one, but it did not kill me after all.” Instantly the premonition of death vanished, and my usual spirits returned. I never had such an experience again; but I have in vain tried to find an explanation for the one I have had.

The share of my division in the actual fighting in the battle of Missionary Ridge was rather slight. It would have been our fortune to take part in the conquest of Lookout