When I rode through the first camp, the kettles on the fires were steaming with boiling water, and meat and bread were cooking in the ovens; but the enemy had to go hungry that day. I saw the bodies of a few Union soldiers who had been killed in their tents and horses shot down at the hitching posts in the rear of the camps. A large rubberized blanket was my part of the spoils that came with the early surprise, and this trophy afterwards proved very serviceable. In all my service of four years I never saw a battle field as rich in the legitimate spoils of war as was the field of Shiloh. As a courier, I had opportunities far above the average soldier to observe the wreck of battle, and I think the greatest number of killed and wounded lay in the narrow valley of the Shiloh Spring Branch on both sides of the Corinth and Pittsburg Landing Road. The ground was literally covered with dead and dying men. In passing this point, my horse received a bullet in one of his front legs, and I was compelled to secure a new mount. Near this place General Bragg had a horse killed under him, and another near the Landing later in the day. Soon after passing this center of carnage I witnessed a singular thing. A grapeshot, striking the limb of a tree under which a number of mounted officers had gathered, glanced downward and struck a horse just in the rear of the saddle, penetrating his body and entering the ground. The horse was killed instantly, but the rider was not injured. At this time the outlook was bright for the Confederate arms. About the middle of the day, the Union Army, in falling back and taking new positions, lodged the commands of Prentiss and W. H. L. Wallace in a thick woods, which after the fight was called the “Hornet’s Nest,” and this place proved a great surprise for both defendants and assailants. Through it runs an old, deserted highway, now known in history as the “Sunken Road.” Worn by the travel and flushed by the rains and snows of many years, this remote and unpretentious road became a most welcome trench of protection to the troops of Prentiss and Wallace. Between this road and the approaching Confederate lines was a thick woods, which completely cut off the view of the attacking regiments and forced them to move against an unseen foe. And so this long-hidden and almost forgotten road, with its fringe of greening woods, proved a pitfall of death and disaster to the Confederate Army and, in my opinion, the salvation of the Union Army. Soon after the attack on this position began Gen. A. S. Johnston was killed, and, of course, this had a disconcerting effect on the Confederates. To lose the supreme head of an army in such a crisis, however able may be his successor, is to approach the brink of defeat, for an event so dramatic and mournful cannot but shock the very heart of an advancing army and throw it into a temporary paralysis. Such was the condition of the Confederate host at Shiloh at 2:30 P.M. on April 6, 1862.