Not less ingenious was the device almost instinctively resorted to by the artillerists for the safety of the gunners when, after the siege batteries opened, the Confederate sharp-shooters began picking off every head that came in sight. The first day saw a number of gunners stricken in the act of taking aim, an incident not conducive to deliberation or accuracy on the part of their successors at the guns. The next sunrise saw every exposed battery, from right to left, protected by a hinged shutter made of flat iron chiefly taken from the sugar troughs, covered with strips of rawhide from the commissary's, the space stuffed tight with loose cotton, and a hole made through all, big enough for the gunner's eye, but too small for the sharp-shooter's bullet. Such was substantially the plan simultaneously adopted at three or four different points and afterwards followed everywhere. The remedy was perfect.
On the 3d of July arrangements were made for the daily detail of a brigade commander to act as General of the Trenches during a tour of twenty-four hours, from noon to noon. His duties were to superintend the siege operations, to post the guards of the trenches, to repulse sorties, and to protect the works. The works to be constructed were indicated and laid out by the Chief Engineer, whose duties, after the 17th of June, when Major Houston fell seriously ill, were performed by Captain John C. Palfrey, aided and overlooked by General Andrews, the Chief of Staff. Daily, at nine o'clock in the morning, the General of the Trenches and the Chief Engineer made separate reports to headquarters of everything that had happened during the previous day. Each of these officers made five reports, yet of the ten but two are to be found printed among the Official Records. These are the engineer's reports of work done on the 5th and 6th of July. They contain almost the only details of the siege to be gathered from the record, notwithstanding the fact that every paper, however small, or irregular in size or form, or apparently unimportant in substance, that related in any way to the military operations of the Army of the Gulf was carefully preserved on the files of its Adjutant-General's office, where, for safety as well as convenience, documents of this character were kept separate from the ordinary files covering matters of routine and requiring to be handled every day or hour. The proof is strong that these important records were in due time delivered into the custody of the War Office, where, for a considerable period after the close of the war, little or no care seems to have been taken of the documents thus turned in by the several Corps and Departments, as these were discontinued; and although the care and management of the War Records division of the Adjutant-General's Office at Washington has, from its earliest organization, been such as to deserve the highest admiration, yet many of these papers are not to be found there. The probability is that they were either mislaid or else swept away and destroyed before this office was organized.