GETTYSBURG
desperate attempt to penetrate our center at Cemetery Ridge. In five minutes three hundred guns were pouring into one another, their deadly showers of shot and shell, and making fearful havoc of every thing that was not sheltered. From our position in the woods we could see nothing of what was going on in other parts of the line; but the air above was filled with screaming shells, as they flew back and forth on their deadly errand. In some instances, shells from the Confederate batteries in front of the Second Corps would pass entirely over our lines, and land near the enemy in our front; a great many of them fell in the open space in our rear.
At one time during the progress of the cannonade, a battery was placed in position on a hill across Rock Creek directly in front of our Regiment, and began to drop shells unpleasantly close to us. But our friends of Battery M, of the First New York Artillery, who had been with us since the Brigade was organized, seemed to get their range at once, and promptly silenced them. On a trip over the field, the next day, I found the posi-
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