Owing to the fact that this battle was so largely an artillery-duel, as has before been remarked, the opportunities for the display or observation of personal bravery were comparatively limited, and mostly confined to a short period towards the close of the battle. That the Union troops would have shown the same personal dash and daring throughout, had the plan of the General in command made hand-to-hand fighting advisable--was fully proved by the short conflict which closed the day. In that short period occupied by the advance of the two wings and afterwards of the main body, two or three incidents occurred, which some of the combatants will yet remember when their attention is thus called to them, and without which this battle-picture, necessarily very defective, and aiming much more at truth than sensation, would be found almost destitute of details. In the first advance, no less than three color-bearers, carrying the same flag of one of the regiments of Meagher's Irish brigade, were shot down within less than five minutes. When the third fell, a Lieutenant in the color-company of the same regiment, who had not many months before deserted the mock combats of the stage for the sanguinary fights of actual warfare, concluded to try _his_ success at carrying the dangerous bunting. He seized the staff and held it, himself untouched, for several minutes, while bullets were actually riddling the flag. At the end of that time a stalwart Irishman, finding his rifle-barrel heated and the ramrod jammed in attempting to load, made two or three ineffectual jerks at the rod, found that it was impossible to remove it; then grasped the weapon by the muzzle, whirled it half a dozen times around his head, bringing the butt down in each instance with crushing force, on the head of a foe; and finally, giving it another and longer whirl, with a wild "Whooruh!" that might have originated among the bogs of Connaught, sent it whirling among the enemy with such force that it literally plowed its way through them and left a perceptible track of fallen foemen. "Be the Hill of Howth!" roared Paddy, when he had completed this exploit. "It's meself hasn't the bit of a muskit left to fight wid at all at all! Here, Captain!" to the Lieutenant holding the flag, "it's meself should be houldin' that, and not you!" and at the word he grasped the staff out of the officer's hands and plunged still farther forward among the enemy with it, than it had before been carried by either of the bearers, coming out of the fight at last without a scratch.