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165 Eight.AlongtheKennesawLine The small space of red clay separating the opposing forces on Cheatham’s Hill presented “a frightful and disgusting scene of death and destruction” after the end of Davis’s attack. Captain James I. Hall of the Ninth Tennessee in Maney’s brigade could not recall seeing any battlefield “so completely strewn with dead bodies.” Yet the Federals were lodged within a few dozen feet of the Confederate line; they could not let the presence of their dead and wounded comrades interfere with efforts to exploit that close position.1 The survivors of McCook’s and Mitchell’s brigades consolidated their position on the night of June 27, deepening the hastily constructed trenches and building higher the parapets.The commanders of both brigades worked out a system of rotating regiments in and out of the front line of trenches. Dilworth, who now led McCook’s battered command, moved the EightySixth Illinois forward on the morning of June 28 to relieve the 125th Illinois , which occupied the center of his advanced line, and the Fifty-Second Ohio relieved the Eighty-Sixth Illinois on the morning of June 29. Duty in the advanced line, located only 60 feet from the enemy, was difficult. The men had to sleep on their arms and be ready for anything at a moment’s warning. Even in the rear line, located 215 feet from the Rebels, life was anything but pleasant.2 Lieutenant Colonel James W. Langley of the 125th Illinois devised a way to advance the forward line with minimal exposure. Langley and Corporal Joseph Frankenburg crawled forward to the slim protection of a tree about twenty feet ahead of the line and dug a small pit near it. When they had some degree of protection, the pair used a rope to pull empty cracker boxes to their location from the forward line. They filled these wooden boxes and used them as a parapet. More men came forward to work in the enlarging space protected by “the cracker box fortification,” and before long the entire regiment advanced twenty feet.3 As Langley’s men firmed up their position on the Federal front, the men of Mitchell’s brigade fortified a picket line to screen their exposed right 166 : aloNg tHE KENNESaw lINE flank. Companies A and B of the Thirty-Fourth Illinois moved silently a short distance away from Mitchell’s right flank and began to dig in after dusk on June 28. At about 2:00 a.m., a group of Confederates gave a yell and advanced toward their position in the darkness. Only about half the Federals had taken their guns along, so all of them fell back to their own works, losing five men who were wounded.4 The Federals’ creeping advance alarmed the Confederates into taking additional defensive measures. The first shipment of chevaux-de-frise arrived before the night of June 28 ended. A wooden device made of sharpened stakes slipped into holes that were drilled through a central pole, chevaux-de-frise were positioned in sections to obstruct an infantry advance . Two sections were delivered to the angle at Cheatham’s Hill, and three members of the First Tennessee volunteered to place them before the works. Knowing how dangerously they would be exposed, according to Sam Watkins, the three men made out their wills before starting. They rolled the sections across the parapets and let them down the exterior slope using ropes. The sections came to rest at the foot of the parapet, and the three men secured them to the head logs with wire.5 The presence of the chevaux-de-frise was a sure indication that life near the angle was dangerous, tense, and exhausting. The Confederates had to maintain a vigilant watch twenty-four hours a day. It was impossible to get adequate rest in the trenches, and exposing any part of one’s body above the head logs was almost certain death. Maney’s brigade lost men on a regular basis to Union sharpshooters.6 Moreover, the smell from dozens of decaying bodies that littered the battlefield became overpowering. The Confederates in the angle lost their appetite, even though commissaries were able to provide them with adequate rations. Even farther north, along the front of Cleburne’s division where Howard’s Fourth Corps had attacked on June 27, the smell from dead bodies between the lines forced the Confederates to pull their pickets back into the main trench. The Rebel pickets could...

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