When we came to a skirt of woods, we were deployed as skirmishers.

Colonel Porter ordered us to re-prime our guns and to advance at twenty-five paces apart, being deployed as skirmishers, and to keep under cover as much as possible.
He need not have told us this, because we had not learned war for nothing.

We would run from one tree to another, and then make a careful reconnoiter before proceeding to another.

We had begun to get a little careless, when bang! bang! bang! It seemed that we had got into a Yankee ambush.

The firing seemed to be from all sides, and was rattling among the leaves and bushes.