XXI
READY FOR ACTION AGAIN
This afternoon the camp of the First Division
and Cadwalader Brigade was proud but saddened:
proud, when the men learned that with their thirty-one
hundred they had defeated fourteen thousand
concealed within ditches and behind walls or massed
for support, with General Santa Anna himself looking
on; saddened, when they learned what the victory
had cost.
"The bloodiest fight, ag'in fortifications, in American hist'ry," old Sergeant Mulligan pronounced.
General Worth had acted rather blue. Out of his thirty-one hundred he had lost one hundred and sixteen killed, six hundred and fifty-seven wounded, and eighteen missing—probably dead or wounded; total, seven hundred and thirty-one, almost a fourth of his whole number. And the list of officers was appalling: fifty-one of the one hundred and seventy had fallen.
Of the First Brigade, Lieutenant Thorn, Colonel Garland's aide-de-camp, was severely wounded; so were First Lieutenant and Captain Prince and Second Lieutenant A. B. Lincoln and Assistant Surgeon Simons, Fourth Infantry; Lieutenants Shackleford and Daniels, of the Second Artillery, were dying, Lieutenant Armstrong had been killed outright; Captain George Ayers and Lieutenant Ferry, of the Third Artillery, had been killed; Captain Anderson wounded.
In the Second Brigade brave Colonel McIntosh,
