Monday, August 17, 2020

Captain Charles Wright Wills: November 12, 1864


November 12, 1864.

The Rubicon is passed, the die is cast, and all that sort of thing. We to-day severed our own cracker line. At 11 a. m. ours and the 17th Corps were let loose on the railroad, the men worked with a will and before dark the 12 miles of track between here and Marietta were destroyed. The ties were piled and burned and the rails, after being heated red hot in the middle were looped around trees or telegraph poles. Old destruction himself could not have done the work better. The way the Rebels destroyed our road on their raid was not even a fair parody on our style. The 20th Corps is at it between Atlanta and the river, and the 14th and 23d north of Marietta. We have orders to-night to move at 7 a. m.

SOURCE: Charles Wright Wills, Army Life of an Illinois Soldier, p. 318-9

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