CHAP. XV.—ADVANCE INTO TENNESSEE.
GENERAL HOOD MAKES A FLANK MOVEMENT.
After remaining a good long time at Jonesboro, the news came that we were going to flank Atlanta. We flanked it. A flank means "a go around."
Yank says, "What you doing, Johnny?"
Johnny says, "We are flanking."
Yank says, "Bully for you!"
We passed around Atlanta, crossed the Chattahoochee, and traveled back over the same route on which we had made the arduous campaign under Joe Johnston. It took us four months in the first instance, and but little longer than as many days in the second, to get back to Dalton, our starting point. On our way up there, the Yankee cavalry followed us to see how we were getting along with the flanking business. We had pontoons made for the purpose of crossing streams. When we would get to a stream, the pontoons would be thrown across, and Hood's army would cross. Yank would halloo over and say, "Well, Johnny, have you got everything across?" "Yes," would be the answer. "Well, we want these old pontoons, as you will not need them again." And they would take them.
We passed all those glorious battle-fields, that have been made classic in history, frequently coming across the skull of some poor fellow sitting on top of a stump, grinning a ghastly smile: also the bones of horses along the road, and fences burned and destroyed, and occasionally the charred remains of a once fine dwelling house. Outside of these occasional reminders we could see no evidence of the desolation of the track of an invading army. The country looked like it did
