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This opened up communications with our base of supplies, and our rations were greatly increased from that time on. "On the morning of November 23d, a little before noon, the 3d division of the 4th Army corps, the one to which I belonged, was ordered into the open plain that lay between us and Missionary Ridge. Here we deployed into line of battle.
On we moved, halting frequently, as the troops were being deployed in line of battle. Our battery turned out of the pike and we had not heard a shot for half an hour. In front of us lay a stretch of half a mile of level, open ground and beyond this a wooded hill, for which we seemed to be making.
In an hour they were deployed before the fire, marshalled to the attack under men from Carr's, woodsmen experienced in battle against the red enemy, this spoiler of the forest with his myriad tongues of flame and breath of suffocating smoke. In midsummer the night airs in those long inlets and deep valleys move always toward the sea.
It was not many minutes before a strong line of dismounted cavalry, followed by mounted men, deployed from this mass to cover the retreat of their fleeing brethren, and restore the picket line. They came down the hills and across the fields, firing as they came.
A line of skirmishers was deployed in front and flankers were thrown out on either side. Thus protected, the mule drivers again cracked their whips and the procession moved cautiously forward. "Now keep yer eyes skinned," said Si to Shorty as they trailed along through the woods and fields and over fences, on one of the flanks.
The enemy could not stand it and fled. Our whole army deployed in sight that morning and it was a grand sight with the artillery playing in open view. I had read of such things, but they were beyond my conception. This closed the battle and we breathed free. I escaped most miraculously.
But with the full daylight, and after the sun had risen in a mist, they deployed us out of column into a wide front on a great heath in the forest, and we halted. There we brewed coffee, not by batteries, but gun by gun. We did not form one column again.
In front, on the western edge of the cane-field, stood Nerson's woods, where, as yet unseen, the Confederates lay in wait; while before them, like a screen, stretched a low fringe of brake and undergrowth. Birge's order of march placed the 25th Connecticut in the advance, one wing deployed as skirmishers across the road, the other wing in reserve.
The time for a strong offensive return had not yet come. The enemy advanced slowly in imposing masses. Shortly after seven o'clock, hidden to some extent by the woods, four divisions of infantry deployed in several lines at the foot of the Henry Hill, and their skirmishers became engaged with the Confederate pickets.
Through a cut in the hills far away, but seemingly nearer on that windy morning, could be seen a blue open bay, blown into the 'innumerable laughter of the sea. The air, the whole scene, was inspiriting, but the Duke looked heavily on as the troops deployed and turned, their arms glittering in the sunlight.
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