Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: September 28, 2025
Behind this stretch of lake, swamp, and thicket there extends from sea to sea a ridge from four hundred to seven hundred feet in height, the whole forming a most admirable position for defence. This ridge had been fortified by the Turks with redoubts, trenches, and rifle-pits, which, fully garrisoned and mounted with guns, might have proved impregnable to the strongest force.
"We had some shallow rifle-pits, with barricades of rails from the fences. The Rebel line, stretching away miles to the left, in magnificent array, but strongest here Pickett's splendid division of Longstreet's corps in front, the best of A. P. Hill's veterans in support came steadily, and as it seemed resistlessly, sweeping up.
Soon after returning to the crest and getting snugly fixed in the rifle-pits, my attention was called to our left, the high ground we occupied affording me in that direction an unobstructed view. I then saw General A. McD. McCook's corps the First-advancing toward Chaplin River by the Mackville road, apparently unconscious that the Confederates were present in force behind the stream.
They immediately dashed through the streets of the city, and being quickly reënforced by other regiments, they soon cleared the rifle-pits and buildings adjacent to the stream of all annoyance. Foremost among the noble men who performed this heroic work was the Rev. Arthur B. Fuller, chaplain of the Sixteenth Massachusetts infantry, who was killed by a rifle-shot.
Grafton pushed on a little further, and on the top of the ridge and on the grassy sunlit knoll was the camp of the Riders, just beyond the rifle-pits from which they had driven the Spaniards. Under a tree to the right lay another row of muffled shapes, and at once Grafton walked with the Colonel to the hospital, a quarter of a mile away.
And in Mullan, Knappe saw more even than the successor of Leary, he saw in him the representative of Klein. Klein had hailed the praam from the rifle-pits; he had there uttered ill-chosen words, unhappily prophetic; it is even likely that he was present at the time of the first fire.
We saw, also, a line of rifle-pits in the rear, commanding the rear of the levee, and still beyond, winding along the foot of the bluff, a road worn by long use deep into the side-hill, and with the side next us strengthened with a good earthwork, affording a covered line of communication in the rear.
As soon as I could recover myself I thought of Havelock and Forsyth, with the hope that they would not follow; nor did they, for having witnessed my experience, they wisely concluded that, after all, they did not care so much to see the French rifle-pits.
By nine o'clock at night he was in possession of five of these redans and, of course, of the connecting lines of rifle-pits. All of them contained artillery, which fell into our hands. Hancock came up and proposed to take any part assigned to him; and Smith asked him to relieve his men who were in the trenches. Next morning, the 16th, Hancock himself was in command, and captured another redan.
In their front lay a broad wooded valley, to them an unknown region, and on its farther side rose a range of hills, that Ridge Norris told them were the San Juan Heights, strongly protected by block-houses, rifle-pits, and bewildering entanglements of barbed wire, a feature of modern warfare now appearing for the first time in history.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking