Here was nice news! Our two Napoleons, right under the muzzles of twelve or more rifled cannon, and six twenty-pounder Parrotts, and with no works! This was pleasant advice to tired and sleepy men, who wanted to go to bed. But such were the facts, and as we never had left a position under fire, and had come to stay, and were _certainly going_ to stay, we _went_ to throwing dirt.
We went to work, to raise and thicken the little bank already there, in front of our gun, and to build a short "traverse" to the right, for protection from enfilade fire. We worked all night, six of us, and by morning we had a slight and rough artillery work, with an embrasure for the gun; the whole thing about four feet high, and two and one-half feet thick, at the top. It was the best that could be done by six, tired, and hungry fellows, all young boys, working with two picks and three shovels through a short night. Such as it was, we fought behind it, all through the Spottsylvania battles, and it stood some heavy battering. This gem of engineering skill,--by reason of the pretty constant courtesies we felt it polite to pay to the unceasing attentions of our friends, the enemy, for the next six days, in the shape of shells and bullets, we called "Fort _Dodge_."
Just here, I take occasion to correct a very wrong impression about the field works, the "Army of Northern Virginia" fought behind, in this campaign. All the Federal writers who have written about these battles, speak of our works as "formidable earthworks," "powerful fortifications," "impregnable lines;" such works as _no troops_ could be expected _to take_, and any troops could be expected _to hold_.
Now about the parts of the line distant from us, I couldn't speak so certainly, though I am sure they were all very much the same, but about the works all along _our part_ of the line I can speak with exactness and certainty. I saw them, I helped, with my own hands, to make them. I fought behind them. I was often on top of them, and both sides of them. I know all about them. I got a good deal of the mud off them on me,--(not for purposes of personal fortification, however).
Our "works" were, a single line of earth, about four feet high, and three to five feet thick. It had no ditch or obstructions in front. It was nothing more than a little heavier line of "rifle pits." There was no physical difficulty in men walking right over that bank! I did it often myself, saw many others do it, and twice, saw a line of Federal troops walk over it, and then saw them walk _back_ over it, with the greatest ease, at the rate of forty miles an hour; _i. e._, except those whom we had persuaded to stay with us, and those whom the angels were carrying to Abraham's bosom, at a still swifter rate. Works they could go over like that couldn't have been much obstacle! They couldn't have made better time on a dead level.