United States or Vietnam ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Gaskell has told me that he would get mad at his own brother, who was assistant adjutant general of the division, and blaspheme at him and call him the conventional name a man uses, when he wants to say a mean thing of the other fellow based on the alleged status of his mother. Towards sundown we were put in motion, making our way to the river's edge, and crossed it on a well-laid pontoon.
In fact, it was only on the evening of the third day, June 21, that von Hindenburg's engineers succeeded in completing their pontoon line to the Pennsylvania shore. Again and again the floating bridge was destroyed by a concentrated shell fire from American batteries on the ridge a mile and a half back from the river.
Now had such conditions continued for several days longer, and a regular siege set in, Lee would have had to fight his way out. Lumber was difficult to obtain, so some houses were demolished, and such planks as could be used in the construction of boats were utilized, and a pontoon bridge was soon under way.
"Hullo, father!" I sang out, when we had got a little way out from the pontoon and opened the mouth of the harbour, noticing, as I looked over my shoulder to see how we were steering, a string of flags being run up aboard the old Saint Vincent. "They're signalling away like mad this morning all over the shop!
There were boats for making pontoon bridges, mounted side by side on wagons, with the dried mud of the River Meuse still on their flat bottoms; there were baggage trains miles in length, wherein the supply of regular army wagons was eked out with nondescript vehicles even family carriages and delivery vans gathered up hastily, as the signs on their sides betrayed, from the tradespeople of a dozen Northern German cities and towns, and now bearing chalk marks on them to show in what division they belonged.
By seven o'clock the whole of Smith's force was ferried over and in possession of a height commanding the ferry. This was speedily fortified, while a detail was laying the pontoon bridge. By ten o'clock the bridge was laid, and our extreme right, now in Lookout valley, was fortified and connected with the rest of the army.
In the belief, however, that the enemy were in retreat the General resolved to cross the river at A by a pontoon bridge and follow the railway line. On the 21st, therefore, he moved his army westward across the Hlangwani plateau, threw his bridge, and during the afternoon passed his two leading infantry brigades over it.
Here we lay in the burnt woods, within a few hundred yards of the enemy, firing and shelling every day until the 1st of June. Our brigade crossed James River on a pontoon bridge and passed through the Seven Pines battle ground to the Chickahominy River, where we spent a few days in sight of the enemy's position on the north side, the picket of each making the river the line.
Doubtless General Kirby Smith thought that a pontoon train would supply the place of seven thousand infantry and six batteries. I remained at Shreveport three days, occupied with reports and sending supplies to my little force near Grand Ecore, toward which I proceeded on the 19th of April.
The difficulty of establishing a new base of supplies at Aquia Creek, and some delay on the part of the Washington authorities in furnishing him with a pontoon train, had kept him idle; but he had not relinquished his design of marching upon Richmond. His quiescence, however, together with the wishes of the President, had induced General Lee to change his plans.
Word Of The Day