The cloud of dust and smoke had become immense and overwhelming in an
instant, but it was pierced always in front by the blaze of fire, and
by its flaming light Dick saw the long lines of the Southern men, their
faces gray and fixed, as he knew those of his own comrades were.
But the charge, brave, even reckless, failed. The brigades broke in vain
on Jackson's iron front. Riddled by the fire of the great battery and of
the riflemen they could not go on and live. The Germans had longed for
revenge, but they did not get it. The South Carolinians fell upon them
at the edge of the wood and hurled them back. They rallied, and charged
again, but again they were handled terribly, and were forced back by the
charging masses of the Southerners.
Dick had been at Shiloh. He had seen the men of the west in a great
battle, and now he saw the men of the east in a battle yet greater.
There it had been largely in the forest, here it was mostly in the open,
yet he saw but little more. One of the extraordinary features of this
battle was dust. Trampled up from the dry fields by fighting men in
scores of thousands it rose in vast floating clouds that permeated
everything.
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