The headquarters mess had finished its early breakfast, and I had just taken my place at the table on Sunday morning, April 6th, when I heard ominous shots along our adjacent picket lines. In less than ten minutes there was a volley firing directly in our front, and from my knowledge of campaigning I knew that a battle was on, though fifteen minutes before I had no idea that any considerable force of the enemy was in the immediate front of our cantonment. The Seventieth Ohio Regiment, and the brigade to which it was attached, commanded by Colonel Buckland, of Ohio, formed on its color lines under fire, and although composed of entirely new troops, made a splendid stand. At the first alarm, I dropped my knife and fork and ran to my father’s tent, to find him buckling on his sword. My first heroic act was to gather up a beautiful Enfield rifle which he had saved at the distribution of arms to his regiment because of its beautiful curly maple stock. I had been carrying it myself on one or two of the regimental expeditions to the front, and had some twenty rounds of cartridges in a box which I had borrowed from one of the boys of Company I. By the time I had adjusted my cartridge box and seized my rifle, my father was mounted outside, and, with a hurried good-bye, he took his place with his regiment. By this time the bullets were whistling through the camp and shells were bursting overhead. Not exactly clear in my mind what I intended to do, I ran across to the old log Shiloh Church, which stood on the flank of my father’s regiment. On my right the battle was raging with great ferocity, and stretching away to my left and front one of the most beautiful pageants I have ever beheld in war was being presented. In the very midst of the thick wood and rank undergrowth of the locality was what is known as a “deadening,” a vast, open, unfenced district, grown up with rank, dry grass, dotted here and there with blasted trees, as though some farmer had attempted to clear a farm for himself and had abandoned the undertaking in disgust. From out of the edge of this great opening came regiment after regiment, and brigade after brigade of the Confederate troops. The sun was just rising in their front, and the glittering of their arms and equipments made a gorgeous spectacle for me. On the farther edge of this opening, two brigades of Sherman’s command were drawn up to receive the onslaught. As the Confederates sprang into this field, they poured out their deadly fire, and, half obscured by their smoke, advanced as they fired. My position behind the old log church was a good one for observation. I had just seen General Sherman and his staff pushing across to the Buckland brigade. The splendid soldier, erect in his saddle, looked a veritable war eagle, and I knew history was being made in that immediate neighborhood. Just then a field battery from Illinois, which had been cantoned a short distance in the rear, came galloping up with six guns