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Straggled along the Causeway heights was a series of weak earthworks whose total armament consisted of nine iron guns, and among which were distributed some six or seven battalions of Turkish infantry.
All through the morning messages from Division artillery and from the liaison officer told the same tale: fierce sallies and desperate counter-attacks between small parties of the opposing infantry, who in places held trench slits and rough earthworks within a mashie shot of each other. About noon the Germans loosed off a terrible burst of fire on a 500-yards' front.
Twelve Commissioners of the general council were to keep constant watch at the Temple, which had been fortified by earthworks and garrisoned by detachments of the National Guard, no person being allowed to enter without permission from the municipality.
In the first place we found that the forts, which before had been destroyed, were replaced by earthworks, mounting a large number of guns, and that the two forts higher up on the left bank were so placed as to rake any vessels which might advance abreast of the forts on the right, these forts being united by raised causeways.
It was the depth of winter, cold, bitter weather, and as the army was on its march from Meldorf to Hejde the advance guard suddenly found itself in face of a line of earthworks which the marshmen had thrown up in front of a dike. This was defended by five hundred Ditmarshers under their leader, Wolf Isebrand. The German guards rushed to the attack, shouting: "Back, churls, the guards are coming!"
It wasn't until I felt some one touch my shoulder that I realised my position. We were sitting, the three of us, in a slanting fashion with our backs to the earthworks of the trench. To our right, under an improvised round roof, a little dried-up man like a bee, with his tunic open at the neck and a beard of some days on his chin, was calling down a telephone.
This was a service of no little danger, and one bringing but little satisfaction; for no sooner had the gunboats left one point, from which by hard firing they had driven the Confederates, than the latter would return in force, build up again their shattered earthworks, mount new guns, and be once more ready for battle.
Throughout the talk Dick and Albert heard the sound of pick and spade as the men continued to throw up the earthworks, and there was an incessant patter of rifle fire as the Sioux crept forward in the darkness, firing from every tree, or rock, or hillock, and keeping up a frightful yelling, half of menace and half of triumph.
It will be remembered that Grant had just accomplished the transfer of his army from the swamps of the Chickahominy to the south side of the James River, and had immediately thereupon attacked the earthworks in front of Petersburg.
Gradually the hesitation to "invade" the "sacred soil" of the South faded out under the stern necessity to forestall an invasion of the equally sacred soil of the North; and on May 24 the Union regiments in Washington crossed the Potomac and planted themselves in a great semicircle of formidable earthworks eighteen miles long on the Virginia shore, from Chain Bridge to Hunting Creek, below Alexandria.
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