they can accomplish and with so few and ill assortment
of tools when the necessity arises. To guard against
the shells that were continually dropping in our midst
or outside of our works, the soldiers began burrowing
like rabbits in rear of our earthworks and building
covered ways from their breastwork to the ground below.
In a few days men could go the length of a regiment
without being exposed in the least, crawling along
the tunnels all dug with bayonets, knives, and a few
wornout shovels. At some of these angles the
passer-by would be exposed, and in going from one opening
to another, only taking the fraction of a second to
accomplish, a bullet would come whizzing from some
unseen source, either to the right or left. As
soon as one of these openings under a covered way
would be darkened by some one passing, away a bullet
would come singing in the aperture, generally striking
the soldier passing through. So annoying and
dangerous had the practice become of shooting in our
works from an unseen source that a detail of ten or
twenty men was sent out under Lieutenant D.J.
Griffith, of the Fifteenth, to see if the concealed
enemy might not be located and an end put to the annoyance.
Griffith and his men crept along cautiously in the
underbrush, while some of our men would wave a blanket
across the exposed places in the breastwork to draw
the Federal fire, while Griffith and his detail kept
a sharp lookout. It was not long before they
discovered the hidden “Yank” perched in
the top of a tall gum tree, his rifle resting in the
fork of a limb. Griffith got as close as he well
could without danger of being detected by some one
under the tree. When all was ready they sighted
their rifles at the fellow up the tree and waited
his next fire. When it did come I expect that
Yankee and his comrades below were the worst surprised
of any throughout the war; for no sooner had his gun
flashed than ten rifles rang out in answer and the
fellow fell headlong to the ground, a distance of
fifty feet or more. Beating the air with his hands
and feet, grasping at everything within sight or reach,
his body rolling and tumbling among the limbs of the
tree, his head at times up, at others down, till at
last he strikes the earth, and with a terrible rebound
in the soft spongy needles Mr. “Yank”
lies still, while Griffith and his men take to their
heels. It was not known positively whether he
was killed or not, but one thing Lieutenant Griffith
and his men were sure of—one Yankee, at
least, had been given a long ride in midair.
After Grant’s repulse at Cold Harbor he gave up all hopes of reaching Richmond by direct assault and began his memorable change of base. Crossing the James River at night he undertook the capture of Petersburg by surprise. It appears from contemporaneous history that owing to some inexcusable blunders on our part Grant came very near accomplishing his designs.