"Jeems, oh, Jeems, did you hear that ar shell?" - Troup Artillery Carlton's Battery Georgians

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"Jeems, oh, Jeems, did you hear that ar shell? Begolly, it went jest like a kivy of Georgia patriges."
Two guns of the Troup Artillery [Carlton's Battery] were in the middle of the Telegraph road near Fredericksburg, Va., firing cannister [sic] shot at the Yankees who were very near and preparing to charge them. Every supernumerary in the company was engaged in bringing cannister shot from the caisons [sic] and limber chests and piling them down beside the guns so as to facilitate the firing as much as possible.

With this section of the battery were James and Henry Mauldin, brothers and two as good soldiers as ever loaded a gun or pulled a lanyard. James was serving at the gun and Henry was one of the supers carrying ammunition. As he came trotting along at the double-quick gate with his arms full of shot, and when in about ten or fifteen feet of the gun, a spherical case shot from one of the enemy's guns struck the ground just in front of him making a hole large enough to have buried a ten-year-old boy in, and making just such a noise as only spherical case shot can make.

Henry stopped still just on the edge of the hole, eyed it for a moment, and calling out to his brother at the gun, exclaimed, "Jeems, oh, Jeems, did you hear that ar shell? Begolly, it went jest like a kivy of Georgia patriges." he then trotted on at his duty as if nothing had ever occurred to interrupt his gate or excite his fear.

Close by on horseback were Generals Early and Pendleton, and hearing this most ridiculous comparison and which showed so much coolness and indifference to danger, General Early laughed so immoderately at it that he almost rolled from his horse.
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Article: The Weekly Banner. (Athens, Ga.), October 08, 1897, page 7.
Image: Battle of Fredericksburg, 1862; hand-colored woodcut of a 19th-century illustration.
https://www.northwindprints.com/civil-war-us/battle-fredericksburg-1862-5880111.html
 
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