retreat instead of advance. But as I said before, reader, a private
soldier is but an automaton, and knows nothing of what is going on among
the generals, and I am only giving the chronicles of little things and
events that came under my own observation as I saw them then and remember
them now. Should you desire to find out more about the battle, I refer
you to history.

One incident I recollect very well. A Yankee colonel, riding a fine gray
mare, was sitting on his horse looking at our advance as if we were on
review. W. H. rushed forward and grabbed his horse by the bridle,
telling him at the same time to surrender. The Yankee seized the reins,
set himself back in the saddle, put the muzzle of his pistol in W. H.'s
face and fired. About the time he pulled trigger, a stray ball from some
direction struck him in the side and he fell off dead, and his horse
becoming frightened, galloped off, dragging him through the Confederate
lines. His pistol had missed its aim.

I have heard hundreds of old soldiers tell of the amount of greenback
money they saw and picked up on the battlefield of Shiloh, but they
thought it valueless and did not trouble themselves with bringing it off
with them.

One fellow, a courier, who had had his horse killed, got on a mule he had
captured, and in the last charge, before the final and fatal halt was
made, just charged right ahead by his lone self, and the soldiers said,
"Just look at that brave man, charging right in the jaws of death."
He began to seesaw the mule and grit his teeth, and finally yelled out,
"It arn't me, boys, it's this blarsted old mule. Whoa! Whoa!"

On Monday morning I too captured me a mule. He was not a fast mule,