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Our battery was but six light six-pounders; yet even with these we moved over the frozen and slippery roads at a snail's pace, the men tearing their boots to ribbons as they hung on to the drag-ropes for the artillery captain was a martinet and refused to lock the wheels, declaring that it would damage the carriages.
All were killed, Captain Jones shooting the last with his revolver, one man of the 53rd, however, being dangerously wounded. Eighteen or twenty bluejackets were attached to each gun, and with drag-ropes ran them about with the greatest rapidity.
I had scarcely written the above lines when the order came to harness up at once. We did so, and were soon off; the sections separated, ours making for a steep hill about three miles away, on which we were ordered to take post. It was an awkward climb in the gathering darkness, with drag-ropes on the upper wheels, when moving along a very steep slope.
This is his business not yours". In a few hours, the road was put in such condition that, by the use of drag-ropes and men at the wheels, we were enabled to pass artillery and wagons over the obstructions; and the column moved on without further material delay.
With a couple of drag-ropes then, and a dozen men upon each, digging heels in the slope, slipping, cursing, back-hauling with all their weight, the first gun was trailed down and run across the gully. As the second began its descent a couple of horsemen came riding slowly back from the advance-guard and drew rein above the farther slope to watch the operation.
As our brigade had succeeded in driving the Turkish cavalry back our guns were not needed in support, so we watered the horses at a well eighty feet deep and had to use reins and drag-ropes and anything else we could find in order to reach the surface of the water with the canvas buckets. It was as well that we had time on our hands, for the whole business took three hours. Then we had some tea.
In the chill rain of dark nights our engineers had to build new roads across spongy shell-torn areas, repair broken roads beyond No Man's Land, and build bridges. Our gunners, with no thought of sleep, put their shoulders to wheels and drag-ropes to bring their guns through the mire in support of the infantry, now under the increasing fire of the enemy's artillery.
When something like order was restored on the hillside I learned from Lieutenant Hagner that he had been detailed to take one of our heavy guns up the hill to the battery. A regiment of Volunteers had been placed at his disposal to man the drag-ropes. Their arms had been left at the foot of the hill.
Only six oxen were left out of a team of forty, and so desperate did the situation appear that twice dynamite was placed beneath the gun to destroy it. Each time, however, the General intervened, and at last, under a stimulating rain of pom-pom shells, the great cannon lurched slowly forward, quickening its pace as the men pulled on the drag-ropes, and the six oxen broke into a wheezy canter.
About a third of the way down, the track, which trended at first to the left, bent abruptly away to the right, from the edge of a low cliff of rock; and at this corner the men on the drag-ropes must also fling themselves sharply to the right to check the wheels on the verge of the fall. They did so, cleverly enough: but almost on the instant were jerked out of their footholds like puppets.
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