Sherman moving the main portion of his army towards the northeast, covered by the Chattahoochee, but still holding the W. & A. railroad with his right wing, our battery was ordered to report to Gen. Wheeler, who with his cavalry was on the extreme right of our army. We were placed in position on the bank of the Chattahoochee, where a ravine entered the river at a very acute angle, forming a narrow ridge between river and ravine, so that by cutting down into the ground and throwing the dirt out toward the ravine, we made level places for our guns with a solid wall of earth as high as the muzzle of our guns, overlooking the slope toward the river, the hills opposite, and the Federal entrenchments along the upper edge of the fields with an embrasured battery in view. Our entrenchment, as described, made no show. We were there simply to guard against an easy crossing at this point.
Lt. A. C. Hargrove, next day was standing at the parapet near muzzle of 3rd piece talking to Corporal Maxwell, who was gunner to that piece. A puff of smoke came from a Federal embrasure across the river and both squatted below the protecting bank. The shell struck the body of an oak tree standing just in front, and some twenty feet above the ground, tearing off a heavy fragment, slightly larger than a man's forearm, which came down with force, the end cutting through Hargroves' hat on his forehead and to the skull, a gash two inches long. Maxwell said: "Lieut., they are cutting at us close," still looking to the front. Hargrove said: "Well, they got me." Maxwell turned around and there stooped Hargrove, hat on ground, and his hands to his head, with blood gushing through his fingers all down over him. He was much stunned with the blow, but when Maxwell spread the lips of the wound, and the blood ran out, the solid skull of his forehead showed uncrutched. Nevertheless the blow threatened concussion of the brain, and he was sent home for several weeks. Dr. N. P. Marlowe, then surgeon with Wheeler's corps taking him in his own ambulance to the Hospital, after dressing his wound.
The enemy crossing in force, lower down the river, our battery was retired from this position and placed on the main line of defense northeast of Atlanta, and was soon faced by the enemy again, after the battle of Peachtree Creek, with his entrenchments forming quite an angle in our front, some 800 yards away, but his lines stretched from that angle almost perpendicularly away from us toward his left.