Rensselaer Standard, Volume 1, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 October 1879 — How He Measured It. [ARTICLE]

How He Measured It.

During the siege of Fort Wagner a line of abatsis was to be built across a clear space in point-blank range of the rebel gunners and sharpshooters. “Sergeant,” says the octfier in charge, “go pace that opening and give me the distance as near as possible.” Says the sergeant (for we will let him tell the rest of the story), “I started right off. When I got to the opening I put er like the devil in a gale of wind. What with grape, canister, round shot, shell, had a regular bees’ nest of rifle balls, I just think there must erbeen a fearful drain of amnnition on the confederate govruent aboutjthat time. I don’t kno vv h w it was, but 1 didn’t get so much as a scratch, but I did get powerful scared. When I’d got under cover I couldn’t ti told for the life ’o me whether it was a hundred or a hundred thousand paces; I should sooner er guessed a hundred thousand. Says the Captain, “Well, Sergeant, what do you make it?” Soon as I could get my mind, says I, ’Give a guess, Captain.’ He looks across the opening a second or two, and then says. ‘A hundred and seventy paces, say.’ ‘Tnunder! Captain,’ says I, ‘you’ve made a pretty close guess. It’s just a hundred and seventy one.” “And that,” added the Sergeant, after the laugh had subsided, “that’s how I got my shoulder-straps.”