The firing of the musketry was so incessant that the ear could not distinguish the separate discharges. Imagine a few hundred gushers, of the gas well variety, all turned loose at once, and you will have as good an illustration as you are likely to get in time of peace. We were not allowed time to contemplate the battle as spectators. Brannon’s division, holding the right, was being flanked by Longstreet’s ten fresh brigades. Already the troops on Brannon’s right were overwhelmed, and the enemy, flushed with victory, was charging down upon the rear of his position, when our two brigades were hurled into the “imminent deadly breach.” It would seem as though every man realized that the fate of the array depended upon this charge, and with the energy of desperation and “a fury born of the impending peril, we charged the enemy,” and though he “welcomed us with bloody hands to hospitable graves,” we faltered not, until we had driven him back and formed our line extending along “Horse Shoe Ridge”--a name rendered historic by the carnage of that terrible Sunday afternoon, September 20th, 1863. We were in two lines of battle, while the enemy was massed ten lines deep in our front, and this heavy force was thrown against our slender lines, in charge after charge of inconceivable fury. And more than once during the afternoon our front line was driven back from the crest of the ridge, over the rear line which was lying some thirty yards down the northern slope, with bayonets fixed and “blood in their eye,” and as soon as the front line passed over them, they would leap to their feet, and with a yell and murderous volley, right in the teeth of the rebel horde, would hurl them back as quickly as they came, regain the vantage ground upon the ridge, while the other line would lie down and hold themselves in readiness to return the compliment. In this way, in a very little while, the whole hillside was thickly carpeted with the dead and dying of both armies. The blue and the gray intermingled in a frightful mixture of writhing agony and stark staring death. We soon, however, had our line firmly established upon the ridge, and all the legions of Satan failed to prevail against us; so that night found us still in triumphant possession of it, but at what a fearful cost. The official report places the loss of our two brigades, in this action, from 2:00 P. M. until dark, at 44 per cent. These two small figures contain a pathos which my pen has no power to portray. We knew, however, that the enemy must have lost more men, as their ten lines furnished more food for powder than our two. If we overshot the front line our bullets had some chance of taking effect later on. And thus the massing of the enemy which would have told with fearful effect upon us, had they succeeded in breaking through our lines, became a source of heavy loss to them under the circumstances.