Spinning Pins

“These riflemen..drive a nail into a tree with a ball without bending it...”
~Thomas Nichols, 1864

Thereafter the nail is quite a horizontal pin, piercing a vertical one. As with a fence the tree may swallow the marker eventually, so if the rifleman wanted to come back as to a monument, remembering, he would have to make careful note of the tree. But then maybe he would have shot nails into trees once a week or more and forgotten all of them. Pins all over the district, rusting.

“In loading, a greased patch of cloth or buckskin was laid on the end of the muzzle, the bullet was centered on it, and both were rammed down the bore together. This cleaned the barrel, and the bullet, when shot, engaged the rifling, and spun.”