United States or Cyprus ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
On the south, and partly on the west, there was an exterior embankment, which seems to have been made, like a rifle-pit, with the ditch inside. The Virginians had but little ammunition, and no bread whatever, living chiefly on fresh beef. They knew the approach of the French, who were reported to Washington as nine hundred strong, besides Indians.
These two men, seeing the importance of dislodging the enemy, at daybreak of the 22nd April started off of their own accord, made so furious an attack on the astonished Russians that they killed or put to flight all the occupants of the rifle-pit, and held it till, support coming, it was completely destroyed.
We could watch the artillery "practice," which took place almost every evening, between the batteries on our right, without any apprehension that they would practice on us. One evening I sat on the rifle-pit, watching this. Scores of the men were doing the same, or were idling the time away as suited them best.
None of the dolorous business of Roland at Roncesvalles about Rheinhart's performance this time! It is like the bugle-horn of Roderick vich Alpine Dhu, "One blast were worth a thousand men." From rifle-pit and stunted log, from shore to shore, the timber leaps into life and rings with the triumphant cheers of the besieged.
"Hurrah!" shouted Bart, as he rose from his cramped position in the rifle-pit. "Oh, Joses! my back! my legs! Ah, ah! Oh my! Do rub me! I'm so stiff I can hardly move." "That'll soon go off, my lad. There, I suppose most of us may go off duty now, for I can't see any Injun out on the plains."
The assault was unsupported by artillery; those making it had no bayonets, and the Spanish fire, ripping, crackling, and blazing in vivid sheets from block-house and rifle-pit, was doubling and trebling in fury; but there was no hesitation on the part of the Americans, no backward step. The Spaniards could not understand it.
There was a shallow trench before we came to the cornfield, too narrow for a road, as I should think, too elevated for a water-course, and which seemed to have been used as a rifle-pit; at any rate, there had been hard fighting in and about it. This and the cornfield may serve to identify the part of the ground we visited, if any who fought there should ever look over this paper.
In the center was a rifle-pit, large enough to hold the entire company. This had served to shield them from the constant fire which had been poured into them from both sides of the valley and a rocky range that served as a breastwork for their assailants. The valley at this point is not more than five hundred yards wide, and the emigrants had their camp near the center of the valley.
There was but little room, only advantage was taken of holes in the rock, which were enlarged here and there so as to form a kind of rifle-pit, in which there was plenty of space for a man to creep and kneel down to load and fire at any enemy who should have determined to carry off the cattle.
The country south of the Rappahannock was against him. The fact of Lee's acting ever on the defensive was against him. The woods and the rivers were against him. All Virginia, from the Rapidan to Richmond, was a rifle-pit and an earthwork. The Confederates knew every hill and ravine as though they were the orchard and the fishing creek of their own homes.
Word Of The Day