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Still stronger than the bank forming the front of the fort were the traverses, which prevented an enfilading fire These were regular hills, twenty-five to forty feet high, and broad and long in proportion. There were fifteen or twenty of them along the face of the fort. Inside of them were capacious bomb proofs, sufficiently large to shelter the whole garrison.
First crossing a field in his front, Lowrey entered the extension of the woods that has been mentioned, and on emerging on the other side his right came in view within easy range of the 42d, and that regiment opened an enfilading fire, Lowrey's line being then almost perpendicular to the line of the 42d.
At the right the horsemen charged them in their vain attempt to fight "out," and in the rear straggling foot and cavalry began also to assemble; slant fire, cross fire, and direct fire, by file and volley rolled in perpetually, cutting down their bravest officers and strewing the fields with bleeding men; groans resounded in the intervals of exploding powder, and to add to their terror and despair, their own artillery, captured from them, threw into their own ranks, from its old position, ungrateful grape and canister, enfilading their breastworks, whizzing and plunging by air line and ricochet, and at last bodies of cavalry fairly mounted their intrenchments, and charged down the parapet, slashing and trampling them, and producing inexplicable confusion.
By all the laws of war they ought to have tumbled back anyhow, but by the laws of the Manchesters they hung on and declared they could do so for ever. How to help? Men! Men, not so much now to sustain the Manchesters as to force back the Turks who were enfilading them from the "Haricot" and from that redoubt held for awhile by the R.N.D. on their right.
They were all very cheerful when I saw them; but how alert, how apprehensive, how watchful! I felt that I was in a place where anything might happen at any moment. The village and the factory were a maze of trenches, redoubts, caves, stairs up and stairs down, machine-guns, barbed wire, enfilading devices were all ready.
Our regiment was stationed on an angle, a little spur of the mountain, or rather promontory of a range of hills, extending far out beyond the main line of battle, and was subject to the enfilading fire of forty pieces of artillery of the Federal batteries. It seemed fun for the guns of the whole Yankee army to play upon this point.
The fresh column charged gallantly, but the deadly line of musketry in front, and an enfilading fire from the well-posted battery, mowed down his ranks; and Gibson's brigade fell back discomfited. Gibson asked for artillery. None was at hand. Bragg ordered him to charge again. The colonels of the four regiments thought it hopeless. The order was given.
Baily had fallen on the rebel side. The batteries from our side were playing from a hill on the east side of Antler's Run, pouring a galling enfilading fire into the rebel Une.
Then he breasted the rise at a canter, exposed to a galling enfilading fire of artillery, and running the gauntlet of the sniping of some invisible marksmen, reached the redan, half-way to the summit. Here he dismounted, threw his charger's reins to a gunner, and entered the enclosure. From the loftier elevation of the Heights a still more striking scene confronted him.
Their general direction was perpendicular to the stream; and along its banks there ran only a short work on either side to protect the main entrenchments from an enfilading fire by light vessels, which might, in company with an invading army, have managed to turn the lower forts by passing through the bayous.
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