Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 129, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 May 1912 — WAR REMINISCENCES [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

WAR REMINISCENCES

BLOW UP CONFEDERATE FORT Exciting Incident I a Battle of Peter* burg, Forty-Eight Years Ago, Is Told by Veteran. The effect of a difficult engineering operation in the Civil war, involving the blowing up of Confederate fortifications, was witnessed forty-eight years ago by Frank D. Thompson, an architect of Oak Park, who was a cavalryman in the 13th Ohio volunteer regiment. The explosion, which occurred early on thfe morning of July 30, 1864, provided an opening through the defenses of Petersburg, Va., which, however, the Union forces were unable to hold. “The Union army lay in front of Petersburg,” said Mr. Thompson. "For weeks Col. Henry Pleasants of the engineering corps had been preparing to make a breach in the fortifications. From the river on one side and around the town, almost to the river on the other side, the earthworks of the defenders extended, broken here and there by a fort. Our earthworks were raised in some places not much more than 100 yards distant. The place chosen for makings the breach waa

near the Petersburg cemetery. Here our line was 133 yards from the walls of the fort and was approached from down the hill by a covered ditch. Beyond the line a tunnel had been driven' into the hillside, extending under the fort, and at the end of the tunnel had! bee placed four hoppers, each containing a ton of powder. The mine was to be exploded with a fuse laid along the> tunnel. “We of the 13th Ohio knew nothing of what was going on. We had been out on picket duty all day July 2.9 and got back to the line in the afternoon. We were dismounted and sent with: our carbines through the covered way to the 1 line. It whs about 9 o’clock in tlon. Our only knowledge of what was going to happen was our order to charge at the sound of the signal guh. We expected this at 3 o’clock in the morning. Three o’clock came and. passed and it was not until 5 that we heard the signal gun. ’ 4 ' “As we afterward found out the fuse had been lighted, but had burned' only half the distance, not much more/ than a stone’s throw. There had been' a call for volunteers to go into the tunnel and light the fuse where it had burned out and one man was chosen from among the many. He fired it and got safely out of the tunnel before the explosion. “There was force in the explosion. The earth heaved under us we were so near, but it did more than heave at the fort Up into the air went every'thing, earth and heavy timbers and the bodies of men, and before the debris had all fallen to earth we had covered the intervening distance and were in the breach. The fighting was hard inside the walls'.* The enemy drove us back, but we returned tb the fight, only to be finally repulsed at 2 o’clock in the afternoon. At about this time I was shot and badly wounded, ’ and lay on the field under «the July sun and the stars that followed until, in the morning, I was taken .up and carried to the hospital at City Point**

There Was Force In the Explosion.