“Hot! Well I reckon I got ’bout as near old satan’s headquarters that day as a live man can. When 37 out of a company of 50 are snuffed out and a half a dozen of the others wounded you may reckon we thought you’uns were going to wipe we ’uns out.” He now tossed his crust away with a look of contempt and, grasping his hickory stick with a firm grip, followed us to a nearby restaurant, where we invited him to a good square meal, after which we smoked our cigars while the survivor of Pickett’s charge continued his narrative as he sipped a generous glass of apple brandy. We held our breath waiting for the signal guns that were to let us know when the ball was to open. The regiments fell in just like clockwork, lots of the boys lookin’ white round the gills, and not a word was spoken above a whisper except as the commands were given. Attention! Forward! and we went down across those fields, with Pickett leading on horseback and every company dressed as though we were marching in a review. “Boom! Boom! You’ns let ’em all off on us at once. Say, Yanks, the screamin’ of the grape and cannister was awful, and they just cut wide swaths in our ranks, but we didn’t quit--did we--until we were all cut to pieces?” “We were close to your lines when I got a bullet in my leg and as I stooped over to see where I was hit my shoulder caught another. That made me fighting mad and I tried to go over the stone wall when one of them Irish brigade fellers chucked his bay’net into me and that laid me out so that I was off duty awhile. “But dog-goned if I didn’t get back just in time to run up against your old second corps again at Spottsylvania. Kinder seems we couldn’t git away from you’ns. But, comrades, I ain’t got nuthin’ agin you. “Say, that ‘bloody angle,’ reminded me of Gettysburg. The bullets made basket stuff of the small oaks, and large ones, too.” “And when we charged up against them log breastworks you fellers would jest reach over and jab us with your bay’nets.” “My, but your man Grant was no quitter, was he? We thought we were going to drive you fellers back ’cross the Rapidan, as we had done many times before, but Ulysses jist shut his teeth down tighter on his cigar and kept moving by the left flank. “But our Uncle Robert wasn’t caught napping anywhere, was he? When you tried us at the Pamunky river, Totopotomy, North Anna and Cold Harbor, you found us ready for you every time. Say, old second corps, we got even with you fellers at Cold Harbor for the way you had treated us before. Didn’t we? “But I’m dog-goned if U. S. G. knew when he was whipped, and, instead of going back and restin’ up as the others useter do, and come out in the spring with new uniforms and guns a-shinin’, why he jist tried another left flanker on us and brought up at Petersburg, where it was nip and tuck for a long time.