When we got back to the regiment, then stationed near a fine concrete house (where Shepard and I would sleep every night), nearly right on our works, we found two thirty-two-pound parrot guns stationed in our immediate front, and throwing shells away over our heads into the city of Atlanta.

We had just begun to tell all the boys howdy, when I saw Dow Akin fall.

A fragment of shell had struck him on his backbone, and he was carried back wounded and bleeding.

We could see the smoke boil up, and it would be nearly a minute before we would hear the report of the cannon, and then a few moments after we would hear the scream of the shell as it went on to Atlanta.

We used to count from the time we would see the smoke boil up until we would hear the noise, and some fellow would call out, "Look out boys, the United States is sending iron over into the Southern Confederacy; let's send a little lead back to the United States." And we would blaze away with our Enfield and Whitworth guns, and every time we would fire, we would silence those parrot guns.