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Updated: May 16, 2025
These iron bars, surmounted by a dozen feet of sand, formed an invulnerable roof for the magazines and bomb-proofs of the fort, and the men enjoyed demolishing them far more than they had relished their construction. Though the day was the 24th of January, 1863, the sun was very oppressive upon the sands; but all were in the highest spirits, and worked with the greatest zeal.
And after that, hour after hour, and day after day, we saw the hill eaten up by our trenches, hidden by a vast laundry of shelter tents, and torn apart by bomb-proofs, their jutting roofs of logs and broken branches weighed down by earth and stones and looking like the pit mouths to many mines.
Occasionally in winter I experience a southern inclination, and cross Long Bridge and rendezvous for the day in some old earthwork on the Virginia hills. The roads are not so inviting in this direction, but the line of old forts with rabbits burrowing in the bomb-proofs, and a magazine, or officers' quarters turned into a cow stable by colored squatters, form an interesting feature.
Rifles blazed down into bomb-proofs, cracked steadily over the heads of comrades who piled up sandbags to block communication trenches; grenade-bombs rained down through the smoke into trenches, blowing bloody gaps in huddling masses of struggling Teutons until they flattened back against the parados and lifted arms and gun-butts stammering out, "Comrades!
The men were well protected by heavy bomb-proofs, and only those who were serving the guns were exposed to the fire of the rebel sharpshooters, who occupied every available place on all sides, and were making fearful havoc among them.
Preparation was nearly complete, and the men raised for the expedition, before the Council at Alexandria, recognized it as a part of a plan of the summer campaign. The French fort of Beauséjour, mounted on its hill between the marshes of Missaguash and Tantemar, was a regular work, pentagonal in form, with solid earthern ramparts, bomb-proofs, and an armament of twenty-four cannon and one mortar.
The rocks have been hewn out into bomb-proofs and battlements, and art has done its utmost to strengthen the place. The parade is on the top of the rock, beneath which vast cisterns have been constructed, which will contain a three years' supply of water.
The garrison fled into the bomb-proofs for protection. The troops, who had landed above the fort, moved up to assail the land face, while a brigade of sailors and marines attacked the sea face.
Again the garrison was driven to the bomb-proofs; and, indeed, so entirely were they chased from their posts, that a Federal soldier went into the fort and brought off a Confederate flag without ever having been seen by the garrison.
It used often to strike me how comic these scenes at Mafeking would have been to any aeronaut hovering over the town of an evening, especially when the shelling had been heavy. Towards sundown the occupants of the various bomb-proofs used to emerge and sit on the steps or the sandbags of their shelters, conversing with their neighbours and discussing the day's damage.
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