4th Iowa Infantry History - Page 12

Next began a vicious trench warfare for the city of Atlanta. The following was written by captain Henry Dwight:

"Here in the trenches before Atlanta, on this 15th day of August, I propose to give you some idea of the actual manner in which we fight. With us the pomp and show of war has become a matter of poetry rather than of fact. We need no gay dress or nodding plumes to inspire a soldier’s pride. Practical utility is what we look at in matters of dress and equipment. Look at most of the pictures. Two- thirds of the pictures in books and papers represent the soldiers with enormous knapsacks neatly packed; officers leading the charge in full dress uniform, with their sabers waving in the most approved style. Now this makes a pretty picute; but let me tell you that soldiers don’t put on their well-packed knapsacks to double-quick over a half mile of open ground in the hot sun at the pas du charge. Limited transperation soon exhausts an officer’s stock of white collars. The most elegant dress uniform will become torn and spotted, and the brightly polished boots will become soiled with mud, when one is reduced to marching in line-of- battle through swamps, thickets, and brier patches, and then sleeping night after night on the bare ground with only heaven’s clouds for an over-coat. Know ye, ladies all, yonder pretty-looking officer, with his spotless dress, resplendent with gold lace, will present a very different spectacle after a few months of campaigning. Dusty, ragged, and unshaven, his appearance is far more in accordance with his surroundings, far more becoming the earnest fighting man that you really suppose he is, than if he were arrayed as you formerly saw him, or as the pictures represent him to be.

Of course, in a war like this, upon which we all entered with the art yet to learn, the science has been progressive. Each succeeding year has developed new phases, and under such schooling our soldiers are indeed veterans ;men whom practice has perfected in all the mysteries of military life. Each soldier knows that where he us to lie upon his arms all the time, in the face of the enemy, only seeking cover from the shape of the ground, he must now make strong fortification, to enable him to hold his position, and must arrange it to stop pieces of shell from the flank as well as bullets from the front. Had the army been as experienced at Shiloh as it is now, Beauregard would have come up and broken his army to pieces on our fortifications, instead of finding our whole army lying exposed to his attacks on the open field. At Forst Donelson, too, where we had to attack fortifications, we ourselves had no sign of a work upon which we could fall back after each day’s repulse; nor did the enemy seem to realize the value of his own works, for instead of quietly waiting the attack, he threw away his army by fighting out side his works.

It is now a principle with us to fight with movable breastworks, to save every man by giving him cover, from which he may resist the tremendous attacks in mass of the enemy. Thus at least we fight in Georgia, in the Atlanta campaign.

Wherever the army moves, either in gaining the enemy’s work, or in taking up a new line of attack, the first duty after halting is to create defensive fortifications-rude, indeed, but effective in enabling us to hold our ground against any force. In forming these field-works every man is to some extent his own engineer. The location of the line is selected by the officers, and each regiment fortifies its own front, each company its own ground.

Generally the situation will not allow of finishing the works at once, for the enemy will probably attack soon after you take position, which is on a commanding hill or some similar point. So you cause only a hasty barricade to be constructed. The front rank take all the guns and remain on the line, while the rear rank goes off in double quick to collest rails, logs, rocks, anything that can assist in turning a hostile bullet. These they place on the front of the front rank, and in five minutes there is a hasty barracade, bullet proof and breast high, along your whole line; not a mere straight work, but one varied with its salients and re- entering angles, taking every advantage of the ground, and cross firing on every hallow. You can do this after the enemy forms to charge you, while he is feeling you with artillery. Thus it takes just five minutes to prepare for an assult; and you can hold your line against an attack three times your number-and that, too, with but slight loss yourself-if your men be veteran soldiers.

It maybe that when your baracade is done you have time on you yet have time. Shovels and picks are always carried by your men, and to work they go to complete the frail works. A ditch is speedily made inside to stand in. The earth is thrown on the outside of the baracade, and the ditch deepened, so that, standing inside, your head will be protected by the parapet. Thus you speedily have a pretty substantial earth-work, with a step inside to stand on when firing, and a ditch to stand in while loading. If you are in the woods, you want to give range to your rifles, and have all the thick undergrowth small trees cut away for fifty paces in front. By felling these all the same way, the busy tops all turning outward, and trimming off the smaller twigs and leaves, and tangling the tops together, you have a formidable abattis, through which it shall be next to impossible for a line to advance alone, let alone against showers of bullets from your men at short range. This done, you can be making any amount of additions to your work as you have time, all tending to make it impregnable. Even after you have pernounced the job finished, your men will fuss and dig and tinker about the works to make them sure protection. They have no notion of taking a position, and then having it taken from them by a sudden assult. They will cut huge logs eighteen inches throuhg, and place them on the parapet to protect the head while they shoot through a space left between the log and parapet. They have also an ingenious plan for preventing these ‘head-logs’ from being an unjury to the service. Experience has taught them that a cannon-ball will sometimes strike one of these logs, and throw it off the parapet on to the troops inside. As a preventive skids, or stout poles, are placed at equal distance along the ditch. The logs being knocked off the top of the breast-works are supposed to roll along these skids, over the heads of the soldiers in the ditch, until the lodge saftely on the bank beyond.

The men will also amuse themselves with devising some new entanglement or snare to annoy the advance of the enemy. They drive palisades- stakes set into the ground with their shrapened points directed outward at an angle of forty-five degrees, and so close together that a man can not pass between them. In front of the palisades they place a strong wire so arranged that it can not be seen but will trip all comers. They will then imagine how astounded will be the rebels in charging the works to be suddenly tripped up and to fall forward on the sharp palisades.

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