Such was the testimony and opinion, undoubtedly honest, of an officer of a green regiment which there for the first time participated in a battle. The truth was, the generals of the National forces were not ignorant of the near approach of the enemy. Reconnoissances, especially in Sherman's front, had shown that. They were only waiting for all their forces to come up to make an attack themselves, and when Buell arrived they did make that attack and were successful. General Prentiss's division, so far from being unorganized, kept its lines, received the shock of battle, and stood up manfully to the work before it until the divisions on both sides of it drew back, leaving its flanks exposed, when the Confederates poured through the gaps, struck it on both flanks at once, and captured a large part of it. On the ground along its line and in its front more men were struck down in an hour than on any other spot of equal extent, in the same time, in the whole war. The Confederates were successful on the first day, not because of any surprise, but simply because they had the greater number of men and persistently hurled them, regardless of cost, against the National lines. There was also one other reason, which would not have existed later in the war. After the first year no army would occupy any position on the field without intrenching. The soldiers on both sides learned how, in a little while, to throw up a simple breastwork of earth that would stop a large proportion of the bullets that an enemy might fire at them. Grant's army at Shiloh had its flanks well protected by impassable streams, and if it had had a simple breastwork along its front, such as could have been constructed in an hour, the first day's disaster might have been averted. As it was, the men fought in the open field, with no protection but the occasional shelter of a tree trunk, and at one point a slightly sunken road. The habit of Grant's mind was such that he always thought of his army as assuming the offensive and hence having no use for intrenchments, and his green regiments did not yet appreciate the power of the spade. Shiloh was a severe lesson to them all. [Illustration: A FIELD HOSPITAL.]