Such incidents have occurred in battle from time to time since men began to venerate the symbols of their cause, but they are not commonly related by the enemy.  If General Johnston had known that his veteran divisions were throwing their successive lines against fewer than fifteen hundred men his glowing tribute to his enemy’s valor could hardly have been more generously expressed.  I can attest the truth of his soldierly praise:  I saw the occurrence that he relates and regret that I am unable to recall even the name of the regiment whose colors were so gallantly saved.

Early in my military experience I used to ask myself how it was that brave troops could retreat while still their courage was high.  As long as a man is not disabled he can go forward; can it be anything but fear that makes him stop and finally retire?  Are there signs by which he can infallibly know the struggle to be hopeless?  In this engagement, as in others, my doubts were answered as to the fact; the explanation is still obscure.  In many instances which have come under my observation, when hostile lines of infantry engage at close range and the assailants afterward retire, there was a “dead-line” beyond which no man advanced but to fall.  Not a soul of them ever reached the enemy’s front to be bayoneted or captured.  It was a matter of the difference of three or four paces—­too small a distance to affect the accuracy of aim.  In these affairs no aim is taken at individual antagonists; the soldier delivers his fire at the thickest mass in his front.  The fire is, of course, as deadly at twenty paces as at fifteen; at fifteen as at ten.  Nevertheless, there is the “dead-line,” with its well-defined edge of corpses—­those of the bravest.  Where both lines are fighting without cover—­as in a charge met by a counter-charge—­each has its “dead-line,” and between the two is a clear space—­neutral ground, devoid of dead, for the living cannot reach it to fall there.

I observed this phenomenon at Pickett’s Mill.  Standing at the right of the line I had an unobstructed view of the narrow, open space across which the two lines fought.  It was dim with smoke, but not greatly obscured:  the smoke rose and spread in sheets among the branches of the trees.  Most of our men fought kneeling as they fired, many of them behind trees, stones and whatever cover they could get, but there were considerable groups that stood.  Occasionally one of these groups, which had endured the storm of missiles for moments without perceptible reduction, would push forward, moved by a common despair, and wholly detach itself from the line.  In a second every man of the group would be down.  There had been no visible movement of the enemy, no audible change in the awful, even roar of the firing—­yet all were down.  Frequently the dim figure of an individual soldier would be seen to spring away from his comrades, advancing alone toward that fateful interspace, with leveled bayonet.  He got no farther than the farthest of his predecessors.  Of the “hundreds of corpses within twenty paces of the Confederate line,” I venture to say that a third were within fifteen paces, and not one within ten.