80 THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. more to tear from inundations, but to do this required much time and mans' efforts. When it was completed, the left wing remained exposed to an attack from the whole confederate force; so we hastened to entrench ourselves along our whole ,.ne. This was a tremendous piece of work. As in all other places, redoubts and embankments had to be raised, rifle-pits had to be dug, and all this under a broiling sun. We had furthermore to cut down the trees on the site selected, and for several hundred yards in advance. In some places no earthworks were erected, but it was thought sufficient to cut down the forest into the contour of a regular fortification. The thickest part of the woods left standing and salient in the midst of a vast abattis, played the part of a bastion. The artillery and the sharpshooters, placed in this wood, flanked with their fire the hedges which represented the curtains. The defenders of these new-fashioned works, it is true, had no other protection against the hostile fire than the foliage, through which it was impossible to draw a direct aim upon them. All these labors were executed with admirable energy and intelligence. In this aspect the American soldier has no rival; patient of fatigue, rich in resources, he is an excellent digger and ditcher, an excellent woodman, a good carpenter, and even something of a civil engineer. Often in the course of the campaign we came upon a flour mill or a saw mill, tiiriwd sometimes by a water wheel, sometimes by an engine, which the enemy as he retired had thrown out of order. You were sure to find immediately in the irst regiment that came up men who could repair, refit, and set them going again for the Borvice of the army. But nothing was so remarkable as to see a detail fall to work at making an abattis in the woods. It is impossible to give an idea of the celerity with which work <>t this kind was done. 1 remember to have scon a grove a hundred acres in extent, of ancestral oaks and other
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTM4ODY=