Personal Narrative: The Soldier On The Front Lines

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The Soldier on the Front Lines Chris Marshall-MW 9:30-10:50 Submitted to Professor Melinda L. Barr in Partial fulfillment of the requirements of History 1483, Oklahoma City Community College, Spring, 2014 The American Civil War has just started. I was stationed at Fort Sumter just four months ago. On April 11, 1861 at 4:30 the confederate brigade general P.G.T Beauregard told his men to open fire on our fort. We fought back for about 34 hours cannons and gun fires going back and forth at one another. The firing just continued all day there was no holding back on either side. Our walls come tumbling down after every cannon shot, the fires were out of control, everywhere I look there was a fire being started from the cannons crashing into…show more content…
I was under Fitz-John porter now and McClellan has assigned the task of holding the federal line north of the Chickahominy River. Dawn has broken over us and we have been pushed back and made a new line behind the marshy creek called Boatswain Swamp. Here is where I would be killed at; it couldn’t have been at a beautiful field like I was hoping for but at a swamp in a forest. We were made into an arc roughly one and three quarters of a mile long and while our artillery stood guard over the bridges across the Chickahominy. Robert E. Lee had sent a series of attacks at us which our line was hard to break. I was in my line face to face to the Confederate soldier with my gun pointed at someone I don’t know but was willing to take his life the same as he does me. I opened fire and brought him down with a single shot, the next line of men on their side came forward and prepared to fire. At this moment I felt a chill go down my spine and when I looked up from reloading my gun I could see a mean glare coming from the other side. He wanted to kill me, I wanted to run but I knew that I couldn’t. I was praying to god saying that I pray that he doesn’t kill me in this creek. They were told ready there weapons, this was the first time that I was so nervous that I could have just fallen to my knees and start crying. Couple of seconds later they were told to fire, I was shot right in the stomach, blood just gushing out of me I didn’t feel any pain but I knew that I was going to die. When I looked back at the guy he had a little smirk in his face, I wasn’t about to go down like this. I fell down to my knees and held up my gun and fired it back at the same guy that shot me. He dropped to the ground still with that same little smirk and looked at me; he moved his lips and which it seemed like him saying well played. I fell onto my back and just looked up into the sky wind blowing the trees

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