SHARPSHOOTING FROM WALNUT HILLS. WITH the first faint flush of day the morning of the 20th, I was up and taking soundings for the locality of my company headquarters. I was as stiff as an old foundered horse, and my head ached and felt swelled. The battle was still being waged by the advance pickets of the contending forces, but the fearful rumble of yesterday's battle had subsided entirely. Nothing appeared in that early morning, at first, to recall the horrors of yesterday, but as the daylight began to pour in amongst the trees, and the mists of night lifted, some evidences of the fray came into sight. The smoke that filled the heavens during that conflict had rolled together into one great window and hung away out on the rim of the horizon. The light breath of wind wafted from over the battlefield, it seemed to me, savored of blood. At the rear of the field hospital a score of legs and arms were stacked up awaiting burial and some blood stained stretchers laid where the tired stretcher bearers had carelessly abandoned them. The faithful surgeons had plied the knife, and worked on, ever since the assault began, and now at the dawn of another day were not nearly done. Old Sol was splashing his crimson and gold over the blue of the eastern concave when I finally found my company quarters, and the men were already blazing away at the enemy from the crest of the nearby hill. In the headquarters tent I found three delicious smoked hams, from which I at once carved three or four slices and ate them raw. From the lacerated appearance of those hams it was apparent that other famishing men had dined there before me. Think of making a meal on raw smoked ham and water. I hadn't a mouthful of bread or anything that would take the place of bread, not even slippery elm, to chuck in with that ham. We were hungry when we got to Vicksburg on the 18th, because we had been living on half rations and what we could cramp on the march ever since we left Grand Gulf. I had one last hardtack when I got to Vicksburg that I saved and carried for several days, and it looked like a medallion off a prize cook stove. The luster arising from the sweat and grime on that hardtack was too dazzling for anything. The worms lurking within it came out occasionally and admired their reflections mirrored upon its surface. Men got very hungry on that march to the rear of Vicksburg. It will be remembered that Grant cut loose from his base of supplies when he left Grand Gulf. I heard men say that they partially subsisted by chewing newspaper advertisements of provisions. Such a delicious breakfast as that raw ham I never ate before nor since. I was never more thankful for a meal. I blessed the hog that furnished the ham and the swain who salted and smoked it.