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Updated: May 16, 2025
While New Orleans was thus excited over the capture of the city, the soldiers in the forts below were debating as to the course they should adopt. They had not surrendered; and although the great bastions were pounded out of shape by the heavy guns of the fleet, yet they were still formidable defences, giving perfect security to the men in the bomb-proofs.
It was indeed wonderful how well the Germans had protected their machine-guns from the devastating effects of the preliminary bombardment, which tore trenches to pieces and utterly demolished barbed-wire entanglements, but failed in many cases to destroy the deep bomb-proofs in which the Teuton machine-guns were protected and concealed.
The front line is protected by five or six series of barbed wire, with heavy front line trenches, studded with redoubts, machine-gun positions, and underground shelters twenty feet deep, while the reserve positions extend in many places from half a mile to a mile in series behind the first line, studded with communication trenches, shelters, and bomb-proofs.
While I was lying with the officers just outside one of the bomb-proofs I saw a New Mexican trooper named Morrison making his coffee under the protection of a traverse high up on the hill. Morrison was originally a Baptist preacher who had joined the regiment purely from a sense of duty, leaving his wife and children, and had shown himself to be an excellent soldier.
Each of these held from ten to forty riflemen, and was furnished with bomb-proofs and covered ways. The central bomb-proof was connected by telephone with all the outlying ones, so as to save the use of orderlies. A system of bells was arranged by which each quarter of the town was warned when a shell was coming in time to enable the inhabitants to scuttle off to shelter.
The damage done to the fort by these shells was very slight, only two or three cannon being disabled in the fort. But the firing silenced all the guns by making it too hot for the men to maintain their positions about them and compelling them to seek shelter in the bomb-proofs.
Now they were to move forward again. The guns at the rear were elevated, to send the bursting shrapnel further into the German ranks to prevent them from rushing at the advancing American troops. And now was a critical time, for even in spite of the barrage some parties of Huns, in bomb-proofs, might suddenly arise and confront the Americans. There was a chance for close fighting.
Their unwillingness to abandon their homes was very great, and it was very natural, for all they had was there, and to leave it was to be beggared. They sometimes, when within range of the artillery, built bomb-proofs near their houses, and took refuge in them, much as the people of the Western plains seek similar protection from tornadoes.
The damage done to the fort by these shells was very slight, only two or three cannon being disabled in the fort. But the firing silenced all the guns by making it too hot for the men to maintain their positions about them and compelling them to seek shelter in the bomb-proofs.
They found Fort Jackson in the state of general decay into which most army posts fall in times of peace, and they set at work at once to strengthen it. All over the parapet, bomb-proofs, and weak points, bags of sand were piled five or six feet deep, making the strongest defence known in war.
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