" On they came ; the first line staggered and wavered back on



280 JLNDEKSOHVILLE.
to the second, which was coining on the double quick. Such a
raking as we did give them. Oh, Lordy, how we did wish that
we had the breech loading Spencers or Winchesters. But we
had the old reliable Springfields, and we poured it in hot and
heavy. By the time the charging column got down the oppo-
site slope, and were struggling through the thicket of under-
growth in the ravine, they were one confused mass of officers
and men, the three lines now forming one solid column, which
made several desperate efforts to rush up to the top of the hill
where we were punishing them so. One of their first surges
came mighty near going right over the left of our Regiment,
as they were lying down behind their little rail piles. But the
boys clubbed their guns and the officers used their revolvers
and swords and drove them back down the hilL

" The Seventy-Eighth and Twentieth Ohio, our right and left
bowers, who had been brigaded with us ever since 'Shiloh,*
were into it as hot and heavy as we had been, and had lost
numbers of their officers and men, but were hanging on to their
little rail piles when the fight was over. At one time the Rebs
were right in on top of the Seventy-Eighth. One big Reb
grabbed their colors, and tried to pull them out of the hands of
the color-bearer. But old Captain Orr, a little, short, dried-up
fellow, about sixty years old, struck him with his sword across
the back of the neck, and killed him deader than a mackerel,
right in his tracks.
