Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 211, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 September 1913 — CAMP FIRE STORIES [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

CAMP FIRE STORIES

CHIEF MUSICIAN AS FIGHTER ■! ■' ' Thrilling Account of Battle at Gettysburg by Member of 136th New York Volunteers. ••• - The duties of a chief which position I occupied in the One Hundred and Thirty-Sixth New York volunteer Infantry at the battle of Gettysburg, were hot very different from those of any ether fighter in the great test of strength between north and south. We went position on Cemetery hill as soon as we arrived on the field, and made use of the stone walls on either side of the Taneytown road to protect us while we supported the batteries on the hill. I As a viewpoint to observe the action on all sides of the field we could not have been more favorably placed It was as If we had been given the best seats In a theater and the entire action was going on before us on the stage, writes Dr. R. B. Tuller In the Chicago Record-Herald. The chief difference was that we occasionally had to take a hand in the stage action, and that the bulle.ts that flew from the stage weren’t stage bullets. While we, ab support of the batteries on Cemetery hill, were not, by some fortune, in the fierce hand to hand fighting of that charge; we were In the center of the most furious cannonading of the fight, which was the prelude to Lee’s advance on that fateful day. Cemetery hill was a point of concentration of our batteries, and of course of the fire of the rebel guns in their efforts to weaken our fighting facilities. The shots from the enemy and of our own guns passed over our heads mainly, but when a rebel shot or shell found the stone wall used by ds for protection, the havoc was sometimes greatly multiplied by flying portions of stone. Many were so wounded. In the cemetery proper, used by Gettysburg people for many years and being Well filled with headstones and monuments marking the graves, scarcely one stone was left upshat tered and thrown to earth long before the end of that day, if not the day before. Our battery men and our own men found themselves greatly annoyed as soon as the enemy had possession of the houses of the town in our proximity by the well aimed shots of sharpshooters firing from windows and other cover. Mainly they were engaged In picking off the gtinners. A well-plantod sharpshooter capable of picking off the gunners of a battery one at a time, usually taking advantage of the cannon’s smoke after first picking out his victim and making very sure aim, is quite apt to unnerve battery aien and cause panic more than the crash and destruction of the shots of the cannon of their opponents. When a man feels that he Is beihg aimed at personally and with little chance of missing, it is apt to create a decidedly panicky feeling. Such being the state of affairs among us and the batteries back <fl us it was finally decided to bring a large gun down into the road and blow Borne of the houses occupied by the sharpshooters to pieces. The house aimed at was brick. The result of the big gun shots was to open more ports then before, for several shots only knocked holes through about the size of big barrel heads. As the sharpshooting continued, shortly after noon It was decided to Belect Infantrymen to rush those places, only a few yards distant, and capture the shooters. Volunteers were sought to iqake the rally yand there were plenty. They collected behind the barricade that had been thrown up across the road, and when all was ready at a given signal they scaled the barricade! and rushed the brick house. Did they' capture the No, not one. It Isn't the ethics of war. Some five corpses were laid out around that house and when the boys returned the sharpshootlng at that point was at an end.