of the battery showed heaps of dead bodies. Statistics show that the Confederates’ loss in this engagement amounted to eight hundred in killed and wounded. While actual inspection of the field of carnage indicated that a large proportion of the slain had met their death from the canister of the Eleventh. The Brigade Commander’s report states that the battery fired with great rapidity and extraordinary accuracy.

The battery entered the fight with ninety-seven men and five officers, commissioned and acting. Of these, eighteen were killed and thirty-nine wounded, many mortally. A number of the wounded had been bayoneted at their guns. Of the cannoneers alone, forty-six were killed or wounded. Forty-six out of a total of fifty-four. More than five men out of every six.

The statistics compiled by Col. Fox in his “Regimental Losses in the American Civil War,” show that this day’s record in killed and mortally wounded equaled, within one, the total killed in any light battery during its entire term of service. This work also states that the losses of the Eleventh at Iuka were 22% greater than those sustained by any other light battery in any one engagement during the war.

You have been familiar with death and wounds and the aching pain of deep sympathy for suffering comrades. Therefore I will not depict the tortures and individual heroisms of those artillerymen who fell, to die or partly recover. Those who died left a legacy of glory and honor to posterity and to their country. That legacy is of greater value than the greatest riches, for it will always endure, and the martyrs of the civil war, the dead and the living, will proudly bear to the throne of God those scars which were the price of their country’s salvation.

One singular feature of this fight was that but two members of the battery were taken prisoners. The guns were captured and recaptured several times before dark. The battery men had never abandoned them voluntarily. One Confederate prisoner afterward said:

It may have been this respect for the courage of the artillerymen which induced the Confederates to let the few survivors go. But could they have looked into the future and seen these same men and guns at Corinth only fourteen days later, they would probably have dropped every other work and secured them while they had this one chance.

After attending to the wounded, the night after the fight at Iuka, all members of the battery were ordered to a rendezvous. They were all assembled by 5 A. M. and, after reverently burying our dead, the men turned their attention to securing the guns and equipments scattered over the field. The drivers cried softly as they removed the harness from their faithful mounts. In one mass lay eighteen dead horses. These three teams, instead of trying to escape, had swung together and died together. My own horse received seven wounds. Toward the close of the engagement he sank down and was left for dead. Some time during the night he revived and was found by an officer of Rosecrans’ staff who rode him until daylight. This horse survived the war two years, then suddenly dropped dead in his stall. A bullet had finally worked its way into an artery.

Of the other three surviving horses one had an interesting history. He was a fine strong bay who always worked as near leader. At our first battle, New Madrid, this horse’s rider was literally cut in two by a thirty-two pound ball. The horse kept his place, covered with the blood of poor James Bibby. After this baptism he seemed to bear a charmed life. He was mustered out with the battery, still able to do full duty.

Early in the morning after the