Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Three).djvu/52

 front promenades I stretched myself on the ground, my aide Fritz by my side. Feeling a nagging desire to eat something, I shouted into his ear: “Fritz, go and see whether you cannot borrow a cracker for me from somebody. I am desperately hungry.” Fritz had hardly moved two paces away from me when a piece of a burst shell about half as large as my hand fell upon the place on which he had been lying, and buried itself several inches in the soil. Thus the life of my son's father-in-law that was to be, was saved by the craving of my stomach.

The furious bombardment had lasted more than an hour when the excellent Chief of Artillery of the Army of the Potomac, General Hunt, passed along the line the order to “cease firing”; not all the batteries to become silent at once, but one after another. The intention, and the actual effect, was, not only to prevent the further useless expenditure of ammunition, but principally to make the enemy believe that our artillery was in great part seriously crippled and would no longer be able to offer effective resistance to a vigorous attack. In fact the actual effect of the enemy's grand bombardment of our lines had been very trifling. A few pieces had been dismounted, but they were easily replaced from the reserve artillery. A few caissons had been exploded, but there was plenty of ammunition left. Some men and some horses had been killed or wounded, but, their number was astonishingly small considering the awfulness of the turmoil, and there was nothing of the terror and demoralization which the enemy, no doubt, had expected to produce. To judge by my own command, which occupied one of the positions most exposed to the enemy's fire, we had suffered very little in killed and wounded, and I did not hear of a single man that had skulked away from the ranks.

But the enemy seemed to think differently. As our