Our brigade was formed in a ravine threatening the parapet, 300 yards to the left of the bastion, and we had connected with Ransom's brigade. From that formation we fixed bayonets and charged point blank for the rebel works at a double quick. Unfortunately for me I was in the front of the rank and compelled to maintain that position, and a glance at the forest of gleaming bayonets sweeping up from the rear, at a charge, made me realize that it only required a stumble of some lubber just behind me to launch his bayonet into the offside of my anatomy, somewhere in the neighborhood of my anterior suspender buttons. This knowledge so stimulated me that I feared the front far less than the rear, and forged ahead like an antelope, easily changing my double quick to a quadruple gait, and most emphatically making telegraph time. During that run and rush I had frequently to either step upon or jump over the bodies of our dead and wounded, which were scattered along our track. The nearer the enemy we got the more enthusiastic we became, and the more confidence we had in scaling their works, but as we neared their parapet we encountered the reserved fire of the rebels which swept us back to temporary cover of a ridge, two-thirds of the way across the field, from which position we operated the rest of the day. When we got back there we had been fighting and maneuvering for more than three hours. Once during the assault I remember the 116th Illinois was on our left. Gen. Giles A. Smith was between me and that regiment; Colonel Tupper, its commander, was making a speech to his men and advising them to take the works or die in the attempt. I thought then, and I have had no reason to change my mind since, that Tupper was gloriously drunk. General Smith snatched off his hat and yelled, "Three cheers for Colonel Tupper." I caught off my cap and together we gave one full grown "Hurrah" and about half another, when the explosion of a monster shell inconveniently near us adjourned the performance sine die. I saw also at another time during the fight, a captain coming back from the front on the run; he had been wounded in the wrist. A man was trying to lead him off the field, but couldn't keep up with the fleet footed captain. He was vainly trying to clutch the wounded man's coat tails as he pursued him, and though under a deadly fire at the time, more than a hundred of us who beheld the race, laughed heartily. When we got behind the ridge we were ordered to lie down, and it felt good to know that we had even a little ridge of solid earth between us and the enemy's bullets. We lay there on our backs and looked back into the throats of the artillery as it shelled the enemy's works over our heads. We could see the balls distinctly as they were discharged from the cannons, and they looked like bumble-bees flying over us, only somewhat larger. While we were thus watching the flight of the balls, one of them struck and cut off the top of a tall