A Battery at Close Quarters
A Paper
READ BEFORE THE OHIO COMMANDERY
OF THE LOYAL LEGION
October 6, 1909
BY
HENRY M. NEIL
Captain Twenty-second Ohio Battery
COLUMBUS, OHIO
1909
THE CHAMPLIN PRESS
COLUMBUS, OHIO
A BATTERY AT CLOSE QUARTERS.
Being the Story of the Eleventh Ohio Battery At Iuka and Corinth.
During the Civil War artillery projectiles were divided as to structureinto solid, hollow and case shot. The solid shot were intended tobatter down walls or heavy obstructions. Hollow projectiles, calledshell and shrapnel, were for use against animate objects; to set fire tobuildings and destroy lighter obstructions. Under the head of case shotwe had grape and canister. Grape shot is no longer used; beingsuperseded by the machine gun. Canister is simply a sheet iron casefilled with bullets and is effective only at very short ranges.
The foremost European military writer, Hohenloe, states that in theFranco-Prussian war, the batteries of the Prussian Guard expended abouttwenty-five thousand shells and one canister, and that this one canisterwas broken in transport.
[Pg 4]In the official reports of the recent Russo-Japanese War we find thatthe Arisaka gun, which was the Japanese field piece, has a range of6,600 meters. The Russian field pieces were said to give good results at8,000 meters, or five miles. The Japanese, and later the Russians, madea great feature of indirect fire. Having located a mass of the enemy,probably beyond two ranges of hills, they would stake out a lineindicating the direction, then secure the range by the use of shellswhich gave out a yellowish vapor on bursting. This vapor being observedand signaled by scouts also indicated the necessary angles of departurefrom the line of stakes and enabled the artillerymen, miles away fromactual contact, to complacently try experiments in battle ballisticswith very little fear of being interrupted by an enemy.
The range of modern field artillery being officially reported at fivemiles, permit me to take you back to a day, over forty-seven years ago,when an Ohio battery, placed in the extreme front of battle, fought atless than fifty yards.
The village of Iuka lies in the northeast corner of the State ofMississippi. The neighboring country is broken and, in 1862, was coveredwith forests. Northwesterly from Iuka lies the village of Burnsville andfurther on the little city of Corinth, close to the Tennessee line. In1862[Pg 5] Corinth possessed strategical advantages which caused it to becomea large supply depot for the Federal armies. South of Corinth andsouthwest of Iuka, the town of Jacinto was located.
On the eighteenth of September, 1862, General Sterling Price lay at Iukawith an army of about twenty thousand Confederates. General E. O. G.Ord’s force lay between Burnsville and Corinth and had just beenreinforced by Ross’s division. Burnsville was seven miles from Iuka.General Rosecrans lay at Jacinto, nineteen and one-half miles from Iuka.
General Grant, taking advantage of this situation, ordered a combinedattack by Ord and Rosecrans upon General Price. Under this orderRosecrans moved from Jacinto at 3:00 A. M. September 19th, and waswithin striking distance of Price’s patrols by noon. Ord was to attackfrom the west and draw Pr