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Fairfax Downey is a graduate of Yale University, and an author who has publislied widely. He has been a newspaperman, and saw service with the U.S. Field Artillery in both world wars. Among his books are Indian Fighting Army (1944), and more recently, A Horse for General Lee (1953) and Mascots (1954). Field and Siege Pieces FAIRFAX DOWNEY HJEAVY artillerymen manned the Bic cuNs in the defenses of Washington and the coastal forts north to Maine where it was deemed necessary in 1861 to build granite Fort Popham to protect the Kennebec River against Confederate Navy raiders. Those gunners missed the lively action seen by their Southern counterparts in the batteries of Gulf and Atlantic ports into which swift steamers ran their invaluable cargoes through the Union blockade. Yet the Federal heavies came into their own at Vicksburg. There the fire of their mortars, up to 13-inchers, 10-inch Columbiads, and 32- and 42-pounders, many borrowed from the Navy, was terrific in volume and effect. They counterbatteried large-caliber pieces in the Vicksburg works such as "Whistling Dick," so called from the sound made by its projectiles in flight, and paved the way for the storming of the stronghold, long and stubbornly defended by General John Pemberton . When General Grant's assault columns and Admiral Porter's gunboats finally reduced the town on the high bluff July 4, 1863, and opened the Mississippi, 30,600 men, 172 cannon, and 60,000 stands of arms were surrendered. In the attack on Charleston, South Carolina, later that month Union crews fired a mighty 300-pound Parrot whose shells all but demolished Fort Sumter. Artillery companies achieved a notable engineering feat when they put a second big rifle, a 200-pounder (8-inch), into position to fire into the city at a range of five miles. Two and a half miles of railroad track were laid through the marshes, and a pine log platform built on piling. There "The Swamp Angel," as her crew christened her, was emplaced, barricaded by 13,000 sandbags. Twenty-pound powder charges * A chapter from Mr. Downey's new book Sound of the Guns, which will be published by David McKay Co. this fall. Civil War History is indebted to Mr. Downey for allowing this chapter to appear prior to its publication in Sound of the Guns. 65 66F AIRF A X DOWNE Y flung her shells, some of them incendiary, into Charleston where an uproar of bells and whistles, followed by indignant protests against "barbarity ," acknowledged hits. Though "The Swamp Angel" was disabled by the premature explosion of her thirty-sixth round, she had fulfilled her mission by damaging morale and drawing considerable enemy lire. Charleston, however, held out despite the capture of Battery Wagner and the shattering of Sumter. Elsewhere heavy artillerymen were embittered by inglorious inactivity. Train guard and camp fatigue at Gettysburg were at least field duty, but most unwelcome to the 1st Maine Heavy Artillery, among others, was the soft detail to the Washington forts. Only the "coffee-coolers" in the battery were content with the luxury of three square meals a day, good beds, and nothing to do but parade and stand to at silent guns. Most of the officers and the rank and file chafed under it. They had not " 'listed to get kilt," but they had joined up to fight and risk it. For months they fretted, sulked and cursed their lot. Like other heavies, the men of the 1st Maine cheered when they were finally ordered to the front where they took a tough ribbing, as they marched up in their neat, fresh uniforms , some with two knapsacks strapped to their backs. "Brought your trunks along?" combat troops jibed at them. "Got a full supply of paper collars? There's plenty of fortifications for you boys to man yonder in the brush." While the heavies, brass shoulder-plates gleaming, marched singing behind their bands, light artillerymen joined the foot troops in taunting them. "Why, dearest, did you leave your earthworks behind you?" Wounded showed them bloody gashes, shattered limbs, and dead men lying in the fence corners and called out derisively: "That's what voli will...

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