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space about six yards broad, and then a hill thrown up eight feet high. These passed, we approached a second ditch, and then the wall, which was twenty.six feet high, against which we planted six or seven ladders.
The hill is much like that at Greenwich, about as steep and as high. Just as I passed the palisadoed ditch, there came a discharge of grape shot from a twenty four pounder, directly into that flat-space, and about twelve fine fellows sunk upon the ground, uttering a groan that shook the oldest soldier to the soul. Ten of them never rose again, and the nearest of them was within a foot of me, and the farthest not four yards distant. It swept away all within its range. The next three or four steps I took, was upon this heap of dead! You read of the horrors of war, yet little understand what they mean!
“When I got over this hill into the ditch, under the wall, the dead and wounded lay so thick that I was continually treading upon them. A momentary pause took place about the time we reached the ladder, occasioned I apprehend by the grape-shot, and by the numbers killed from off the ladders; but all were soon up, and formed again in the road just over the wall. We now cheered four or five times! When we had entered the citadel, which was directly after we had scaled the wall, no shot came amongst us; the batteries there had been silenced before we were over, and we formed opposite the two gateways, with orders to “let no force break through us.” I was in the front rank!
