The rebels had more than 25,000 men behind their works, and why they didn't kill every soul of us I cannot imagine. How glad we were to get back of the Walnut hills on the 23rd, and to go into camp with the assurance that no more assaulting efforts would probably be required of us. When we sat around the campfire down in the ravine that night we compared notes of experiences during that bloody battle and talked about our dead and wounded comrades. Old Joe Smith, who was one of the storming party volunteers, said, "Boys, I had sweet revenge on the brutes yesterday. I got right into the crotch of a fallen tree close to their works, so that I was protected in front and on both flanks, and I laid my gun across the log so that I had constant aim on their works, and when one of them fellers got up to shoot I would see his gun barrel come up first, and I would have a dead liner on him when his head popped up and I could salt him every time, pretty near." "But," said Joe, "there was one feller kept gitting up right opposite me and his face was so dumbed thin I couldn't hit 'im." After supper we were detailed to dig rifle pits, and had talks with rebels across the bloody chasm. [Illustration] CHAPTER V. IN THE RIFLE PITS. WE failed to take Vicksburg by assault. We not only failed to take it, but we failed to break their lines of defense and make permanent lodgment anywhere along our front, General McClernand to the contrary notwithstanding. For ten hours that day we fought the entrenched enemy and had not won the battle. Our forces had charged the parapets and bastioned forts valorously but death was the sole reward of their great valor. We lost 3,000 men while the sheltered confederates, within their formidable works lost only 1,000. I desire to add that Admiral Porter co-operated in the assault, and shelled the water batteries and town from his mortar boats stationed in the river, and from his gun boats. So fierce was his attack on the water batteries, which were engaged at 440 yards, and so great was the noise of his gun and so dense the smoke that Porter heard and saw nothing of our land operations. We were quartered along one of the Walnut hillsides after the assault of the 22nd, and we went industriously to work fitting up our huts and bowers in the best sheltered and most available spots along the hill slope. I put in a half day of solid work building me a cane palace which, when I had it enclosed and nearly finished, was instantaneously wrecked by a piece of rebel shell which an overhead explosion precipitated into the top of my beautiful enclosure ripping it downwards and wrecking it completely. I took up what was left of my bedding and belongings and built in a safer locality.