Posted by DK on 9/5/2009, 6:37 pm, in reply to "Re: Bullseye"
64.5.141.2
Thanks fer printin that thair document. Don't you believe fer a minute it was an intentional richocet. He prolly couldn't hit the barn door with a bass fiddle. Seriously though, for those who have not been to the little museum at the foot of High St. they have an impressive collection of rifles, pistols and edged weapons from the war. They also have the coat which Capt. Cary F. Grimes of Grimes Portsmouth Artillery Battery wore when he was mortally wounded at the battle of Sharpsburg, Maryland on Sept. 17, 1862. This battle was called Artillery Hell by Confederate General D. H. Hill because his artillery battalion lost so many guns, limbers, caissons, men and horses from Yankee counter-battery fire. The Confederate cannon did not have the range of the Union guns which they were fighting. After the battle General Robert E. Lee made a comprehensive upgrade in his artillery battalions. He aquired cannons with longer range and tried to regroup his batteries so that there were no longer batteries with mismatched weapons. An example of this were numerous batteries with say 1 ten pound Parrott Rifle, 1 twelve pound brass Napoleon smoothbore and, 2 6 lb. brass smoothbores. While Lee had many brilliant young artillery officers who took advantage of the tactical flexibility of these mismatched cannons, he spent many anxiety filled hours trying to aquire more state of the art weapons and of hopefully the same calibur for his, "long arm," while retiring older less powerful models.
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