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Updated: May 19, 2025
But the skirmish-line, spreading over a wider front, evidently perplexes them, and they halt. The three shots are presently heard, then the skirmish-line flees in groups across the bare downs, the vociferating yells of the gray-coats fairly drowning the hideous clamor of the muskets. "Ah! we're saved," a lieutenant cries, waving his cap like a madman.
I had accompanied the advance and looked on with positive wonder. A miracle seemed about to be enacted before my very eyes. Gordon's poor little skirmish-line of less than two thousand men, with the half- equipped horsemen of Fitzhugh Lee, on their broken-down animals, seemed about to drive back the whole Federal army, and cut their way through in safety. Alas! the hope was vain.
With a few skeleton regiments supplied with numerous flags which he posted to show over the crests of the ridges in our rear, as if there were men in proportion, he himself took command of a line of sharpshooters in our front. This skirmish-line was composed of stragglers he had gathered up, and whom he had transformed from a lot of shirkers into a band of heroes.
This swarm of tree-men formed the Spanish skirmish-line, and a most dangerous and effective line it was, for the reason that it could be neither seen, driven in, nor dislodged. The hidden marksmen used Mauser rifles with smokeless powder, and although our men heard the reports and were killed or disabled by the projectiles, they had no guide or clue whatever to the location of their assailants.
When advancing or retreating in line of battle, the usual skirmish-line constitutes the picket-line, and may have "reserves," but usually the main line of battle constitutes the reserve; and in this connection I will state that the recent innovation introduced into the new infantry tactics by General Upton is admirable, for by it each regiment, brigade, and division deployed, sends forward as "skirmishers" the one man of each set of fours, to cover its own front, and these can be recalled or reenforced at pleasure by the bugle-signal.
A portion of Merritt's cavalry attacked this infantry and drove in its skirmish-line, and though not able to dislodge Gordon, Merritt held the ground gained till night-fall, when the Confederate infantry moved off under cover of darkness to Hupp's Hill, between Strasburg and Cedar Creek.
On the 24th we renewed the march, and I accompanied the Twentieth Corps, which took the direct road to Sandersville, which we reached simultaneously with the Fourteenth Corps, on the 26th. A brigade of rebel cavalry was deployed before the town, and was driven in and through it by our skirmish-line.
In the afternoon a heavy skirmish-line had been thrown forward to the heights on the south side of Cedar Creek, and a brisk affair with the enemy's pickets took place, the Confederates occupying with their main force the heights north of Strasburg.
They could speedily make their fortunes if they would work as rapidly in cotton-fields. I have never seen anything like it, except a flock of turkeys removing the grasshoppers from a piece of pasture. Perhaps it is not generally known that we get the idea of some of our best military maneuvers from the turkey. The deploying of the skirmish-line in advance of an army is one of them.
This occurred at a crisis about Kenesaw, when the railroad was taxed to its utmost capacity to provide the necessary ammunition, food, and forage, and could not possibly bring us an adequate supply of potatoes and cabbage, the usual anti-scorbutics, when providentially the black berries ripened and proved an admirable antidote, and I have known the skirmish-line, without orders, to fight a respectable battle for the possession of some old fields that were full of blackberries.
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