Chapter III: Part 3

Not the chimneys alone played tricks on the householders. Mischievous comrades have been known to drop a handful of cartridges down a chimney from the outside, with the result of a smothered explosion and a great scattering of ashes and embers over everything and everybody within.

The spirit of fun also found outlet in the adornment of the gables of our dwellings with various legends suggestive of the personal peculiarities of the inmates. For instance, of two queerly assorted tent-mates, one had been a church sexton and a conspicuous functionary at village funerals; the other had worked in a silverware factory. Over their door some wag tacked a sign with the inscription:

DOWD AND GRIFFITH,
JEWELLERS AND UNDERTAKERS.

As few of us were content with the wholesale and not too dainty work of the company cooks, we did most of our cooking ourselves by our kitchen fires, and those of us who survived the war learned enough to make us useful to the women who were wise enough to choose us as husbands, though I fear the details of our housekeeping would have shocked them.

Many a pleasant evening we spent about our little fireplace. We talked about home, the girls we loved, religion, politics, literature, camp gossip, everything. Or we read, when we had books or papers from home, or wrote letters or our journals.

There was, however, little real privacy in those huts so close together with their canvas roofs. Any loud talk could be heard from one to the other and in the evening after "retreat" the camp became a very babel of men singing, talking, laughing, swearing, telling stories; a chorus in one tent, a game of cards in another; in three or four at once loud discussions of the doings in the regiment or of the state of the country.

At nine o'clock "taps" sounded, and the officer of the day went the rounds to see that all lights were out. This was early bed-time in the long winter nights, and by various ruses we managed to conceal the glimmer of candles re-lighted after the officer had returned to the guard-house. The Bible and Shakespeare were responsible for some of these evasions of military regulations, quiet little games of cards for more of them.

Speaking of cards and Bibles brings up the image of the chaplain.

A friend in a regiment distinguished for its high discipline and its severe losses in many battles said to me one day: "A good chaplain makes a good regiment." Then, in illustration he told me the story of their own chaplain, a man of fine culture, high social position and great devotion to his calling. In his pastoral visits through the camp if he surprised a group engaged in a game of "bluff," he would quietly scoop up the stakes, put the money in his own pocket and say: "Boys, this is for the hospital fund." Strange to say, the boys never murmured. The cheerful but shamefaced reply was always, "All right, chaplain."

I think no one will wonder who hears the rest of the story.

On the eve of battle this chaplain took personal command of the stretcher-bearers and when the combat was raging he would lead his little band of helpers into the thickest fire to succour the wounded. My friend told me: "I have known him to creep out between the opposing lines to bring off wounded men. The boys all knew that if they got into trouble, Chaplain H---- would be there to help if this was in the power of mortal man." There were other chaplains of like spirit. Our own was not only untiring in his care for the sick and wounded in the hospitals, but always ready for any kindly service he could render to the members of the regiment or to their families at home. But it must be confessed that they were not all of this stamp. It was quite possible for the chaplain to be the most useless officer in a regiment.

It could not be said of our regiment that we were like the men of Cromwell's "new model," yet we came from communities in which Puritanism was traditional and in almost every company there were at least a few examples of strong Christian character. The two serjeants in our own company who died in the service, one by sickness and the other in battle were men of this sort, and one of our captains who fell in battle was a man whose Christian life was a benediction to the regiment.

But occasionally one met with what good people might consider strange inconsistencies. I have heard swearing euphemistically described as the utterance of "short prayers." One of our field officers was a man whose godly life was known to all, yet in intense moments short prayers of startling character would escape him.

On a Sunday, so it was said, a group of officers gathered in his tent fell into warm discussion of some troublesome regimental affair. The lieutenant colonel paced back and forth with his hands behind him taking no part in the conversation but biting his bristly moustache, as was his wont when annoyed. Suddenly he stopped short and, facing them exclaimed: "Well, gentlemen, let's stop this damned quibbling and go and worship God awhile." Then picking up his Bible he strode off by himself into the woods, leaving his guests to their reflections.

Religious men were apt to be more intense in the army than at home, and those who frequented the prayer-meetings in the tents or, in pleasant weather, under the trees, will never forget their atmosphere of warm and solemn earnestness.

On the night before we stormed Marye's Hill the moon shone through fleecy clouds and it was only partly dark. We lay in line of battle at rest, the most of us trying to sleep. Presently, out toward the front between us and the skirmish line voices were heard. The watchful major anxiously asked: "What is that? Who is talking out there?" One of the men answered, "Major, it is only some of the boys having a prayer-meeting;" and the major says that instantly, in place of his fears and vexation, a feeling of deep thankfulness came over him as he thought of the prayers ascending for us all on the verge of battle.

There was a young soldier in our company to whom his mother, when she parted from him, gave a little book of daily Scripture selections. She said to him: "I have another just like this and we will both read the same verses every day." The soldier kept true tryst with his absent mother and, no matter where he was read his text every day. As we lay in the sunken road on that fateful morning after the moonlight prayer-meeting and the bullets began to speak their deadly whispers in our ears and we were all feeling the chill and dread of the plunge into battle, he opened his little book. The text for the day was, "Fear not, for I am with thee: be not dismayed, for I am thy God!" He has told me that if a voice from heaven had spoken it could not have been more clear, and for the remainder of that terrible day all fear was gone.

We believed in our cause, in the war, and in final victory; but we were not soldiers for the love of it. The end of fighting and _home_ was the goal of the hope of the army--a vain hope to thousands of us, yet the star that beckoned us all forward. How eagerly our thoughts turned northward might be seen on mail days. Letters came with varying regularity; in settled camp we could generally count on them, but in times of active campaign mails were uncertain and when one arrived it was pathetic to see the wave of expectation that would sweep through the ranks. Often a cheer would go up when the postman with mail bags slung across his horse, came in sight. Then there was impatient waiting until the letters for the company came down from headquarters and an anxious crowd around the captain as he called them off. The disappointment of those who received none was often pitiful. You would hear one and another say: "Captain, isn't there one for me?" "Captain, are you sure? I know I ought to have one this time."

Then, tired and hungry as we were after the day's march, supper would go untasted until we could read the news from home; and long afterward by our camp-fires we would talk it over; and you might hear letterless Tom come to Bill and ask, "What does your wife say about my folks? Has she seen them lately? Are they all well?" The most of us would read our letters with quiet gladness; but now and then you might see some poor fellow bending with tear-stained face over his message from home and hear his comrades saying in hushed tones of sympathy, "Jim has bad news; his little girl is dead."

The outgoing mail was far lighter than the incoming: we wrote under difficulties; yet there were times when the whole camp seemed filled with scribes. But our letters were apt to be brief, and when any important movement was at hand we knew that they would not be promptly forwarded. Inconvenient information sometimes travelled in army letters.

Our turn at picket duty was, with some of us, a favourite time for writing up our correspondence. In pleasant weather it was only at the outposts that the work was trying. "On the reserve," or even "the support," we had only to hold ourselves in readiness for emergencies. Picket duty was often a positively enjoyable change from the monotony of camp. When fires were allowed we would fell great oaks for the mere fun of it, cut off their tops and branches for our fire and let the trunks lie. War is wasteful in ways little thought of. Yet the scars of the picket posts were as nothing compared with the deserts made by the great camps.

But picket duty must be done regardless of weather, and at the outposts no fires were permitted at any time. I remember once leaving camp in a snow-storm which, by the time we reached our post had changed into a cold rain. Night was falling, we had no tents, none were allowed on the picket line; but a German comrade and I managed to prop up a rubber blanket upon sticks so that it gave a scanty shelter from the rain, and as we crept under it my friend exclaimed, "Ach, here dees is nice under an injun-rubber himmel!"

Some of the nights on the picket line will always dwell in my memory. There was one when our post was in the heart of a forest of giant pines. A wild north-wester was blowing and its elfin music roared among the tree-tops as if the myriad spirits of the power of the air were let loose. Yet down below where we stood, all was peace; not a breath stirred the feathery branches or the soft carpet of pine-needles under our feet. Even now I can feel the deep and solemn repose, the sense of mighty, restful shelter from the war of elements with which the shadowy forest pillars enwrapped us.

During our winter in camp along the Rappahannock the only danger on the picket line was from bushwhackers. But nothing is more trying to the nerves than the chance of being picked off in the dark by unseen skulkers. In the face of the enemy it is different: you then expect to be shot at and to shoot. It is far more dangerous, but scarcely less exciting. Soldiers are not fond of picket work, but they hate the monotonous restraint and night work of ordinary and yet perfectly safe camp-guard duty. A common punishment for slight delinquencies is to give a man an extra turn on guard. Severe punishments, such as "ball and chain," or even tying a man up by the thumbs so that his feet barely touch the ground were not uncommon, though I am glad to say that this cruel torture was never permitted in our own and many other regiments.

One night I was serjeant of the guard at brigade headquarters. The guard-house was a log building divided by a loosely built partition with wide crevices into two rooms: one for the guard, the other for a prison, in which at that time three deserters were confined. My duty compelled me to keep awake, and the prisoners, with the shadow of the death-penalty upon them spent the whole night in talk.

Without heeding the guard, they laid bare their lives to each other as men will sometimes do when the end seems near. They talked about their families--one at least was a married man--and about the doings of younger days when they were boys on the farm, and they seemed to hunt out every bit of wrong or shame in their lives as though it must be confessed, at least to each other. One of them was evidently a very decent man; but another, who had been a serjeant in his regiment and plainly the ring-leader, was, judging from his talk a desperado. Once, after he had told of some wild deed he said: "But I have done worse things than that; things that would hang me if they were known." Then, in answer to an inquiry of his companions: "No, I won't tell you even now about that."

In the morning I saw this man. He was strikingly handsome, a most soldierly-looking fellow. He talked with me freely and pleasantly; there was something fascinating about him.

The deserters were not shot. With sentence suspended they were replaced in the ranks and told that, if they did their duty the next time their regiment was called into action, they would be pardoned.

Shortly afterward came the bloody but brilliant little battle at Franklin's Crossing. In the first boat which left the shore--the same in which our noble Captain D---- was killed--was the dare-devil ex-serjeant. Before the boat reached the opposite bank he was out of it, and without waiting for any one, he rushed straight at the enemy's earthwork alone. We expected to see him drop, but he bore a charmed life; he was one of the first to enter the works, and by sheer boldness he brought off half-a-dozen prisoners and coolly marched them before him to the rear.

We never saw a military execution; but that which I remember as the saddest scene of our army life was the degradation of an officer. He had been condemned for cowardice before the enemy.

The division was drawn up in a great hollow square, and the officer in full uniform was marched under guard into the centre where all could see him. There in loud tones the finding of the court-martial and its sentence were read, after which the adjutant approached the condemned officer, tore off his shoulder-straps, took his sword from him, ran it half way into the ground and broke it before his face. The guard then closed about the disgraced and degraded man and marched him away.

I had never seen him before--he was from another brigade--but as he passed near and I could look into the deathly pale face of that young man with the heart-break of despair written on every feature, I said to myself, "This is a hundred times worse than death"; and I found myself wildly wishing that he had been shot dead in battle! When the parade was dismissed we went back to our quarters in awe-struck silence, broken only by expressions of deep compassion.

In strong contrast with this, the grandest and most impressive scene we witnessed was the review of the army by President Lincoln.

It was on a dull wintry day. We marched several miles from our camp before we came, early in the morning to the reviewing ground, which was a vast, desolate, open space, mostly level but with little hillocks here and there. Upon one of these we halted waiting for the mustering of the gathering host. For hours the dark lines of men in blue poured in from every direction until all the plain and every little hilltop was alive with them.

For six or seven months we had been members of the great army; we had shared its toils and perils, we had lived its life, we had felt the throbbing of its mighty pulse in our own blood, we had been part of its long line of battle; yet we had never as yet seen the assembly of our brethren in arms. Now the plain was growing black with them; a hundred thousand men were forming in apparently solid masses, the battle-flags of the regiments waving close together.

The scene was the more impressive because there were no idle spectators. This was no gala day for curious, gazing, merry-making crowds, and brilliant costumes, and feasting and huzzas; but solemnly, silently save for the measured tramp of battalions and the rolling of the drums a nation's strength was massing as if to weigh itself, to feel itself and ask its own soul if it were fit for the mighty work and the awful sacrifices awaiting it.

We could not know then that Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, the Wilderness, Spottsylvania, Cold Harbor, Petersburg, written across the scroll of a short two years to come were holding in their fateful though glorious names the doom of death or wounds for more in number than all the thousands of us who beheld each other that day. But we felt that a heavy-laden future was swiftly coming toward us; we could almost hear the rustling of her wings in the air of the leaden sky under which, apart from the world, alone with ourselves and God, we stood a great brotherhood of consecrated service.

But now our moment has come. We take our place in the moving ranks. We marched in close column with double company front, so that each regiment took up small space. As we neared the reviewing stand the tall figure of Lincoln loomed up. He was on horseback and his severely plain, black citizen's dress set him in bold relief against the crowd of generals in full uniform grouped behind him. Distinguished men were among them; but we had no eyes save for our revered President, the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, the brother of every soldier, the great leader of a nation in its hour of trial. There was no time save for a marching salute; the occasion called for no cheers. Self-examination, not glorification had brought the army and its chief together; but we passed close to him so that he could look into our faces and we into his.

None of us to our dying day can forget that countenance! From its presence we marched directly onward toward our camp and as soon as "route step" was ordered and the men were free to talk they spoke thus to each other: "Did you ever see such a look on any man's face?" "He is bearing the burdens of the nation." "It is an awful load; it is killing him." "Yes, that is so; he is not long for this world!"

Concentrated in that one great, strong yet tender face, the agony of the life or death struggle of the hour was revealed as we had never seen it before. With new understanding we knew why we were soldiers.

A Little Battle

The great battles of a war like ours absorb the attention of historians; yet scattered between these grand climacterics, like local squalls or thunder-showers in the intervals of sweeping storms, there were hundreds of little, unrecorded fights which, to those who felt their fury often meant almost as much as the main tempests.

We found it so in the very last affair in which our regiment took part. Our term of service was all but ended. The men who had been detailed as clerks at headquarters, teamsters, ambulance drivers etc., had been sent back to their companies in anticipation of our speedy mustering out; everything seemed quiet along the Rappahannock; we reckoned our battles all fought and dared at last to believe that home-going for those who were left of us was actually a possibility. "Home again!"--it was all we talked of by day, it coloured our dreams by night as we slept in our pleasant camp under the summer moon.

When therefore, early on a June morning the command came to strike tents and prepare to move, a thrill of expectation went with it through the regiment. But our vision of home quickly melted as we saw the stir of preparation spreading like an advancing wave into all the regiments about us, and its last pathetic remnants were rudely blotted out by the distribution of the ominous twenty extra rounds of cartridge. We handled them gingerly, none too willingly, for they said to us, "Not home this time, boys,--battle once more first; some of you will never see home."

Late in the afternoon a short march brought our division to the hills above the fateful river; for the third time we beheld sleepy old Fredericksburg away at our right, and directly before us the familiar amphitheatre of fields shut in by distant hills. It seemed incredible that twice within six months trampling armies had here been locked in the bloody embrace of mighty battle; no more peaceful sight could be imagined than those gently rolling, grassy plains with their crown of wooded, leafy upland all bathed in the slanting rays of sweet June afternoon sunshine.

A single suspicious blot marred the landscape. Opposite where we stood, at the farther side of the river guarding our old crossing place, the yellow mound of a freshly dug earthwork loomed up; yet for all we could see it might have been a great grave, so silent, so apparently lifeless was it.

But there was no lingering for the view. Down the hill we went, out over the level ground beneath, and from every side we could see the dark lines pouring over the slopes until, with swift and silent precision the division was formed in battle array. In a few moments as if by magic the northern side of the river valley had become alive with the presence of a sternly-marshalled host.

The southern side also awoke. Out from a distant grove a Confederate regiment, the support of the as-yet-invisible picket line came forth. We could see the sheen of their rifles flashing in the sunshine as they hastened toward the earthwork.

As yet not a shot had been fired and scarce a sound was heard; even the tramp of marching feet and the rumble of artillery wheels was muffled by the soft, grassy ground. I can feel even now the queer sensation of unreality, as though it were all a gigantic pantomime, or some eerie flitting of armies of ghosts.

But appearances could not deceive us. We knew too well the Spirit of the Place; we waited its arousal with grave expectation. The feeling in our ranks was picturesquely expressed by a stuttering little fellow in our company when, as we halted for a few moments on the hills above and watched the silent river and apparently-deserted plain and hills, some one ventured the rash opinion that the enemy had decamped. The stammerer quickly replied:

"You j-just g-g-go ov-ver and s-stir up the hive, and the b-b-bees will c-come out f-fast enough!"

That river had always been a River of Death whenever we had crossed it. Were we to prove it once more? The question in our hearts was answered when the pontoon train with its long line of great boat-laden waggons issued from our ranks and, like an enormous snake began to wind its way toward the river, its head plunging downwards and disappearing in the hidden road leading to the water's edge. Pontoons at the front always meant bloody business in those Rappahannock days. The illusion, the silence before the storm, is at an end. Hark! There is a rattle of rifles from the other side. With it another clatter and roar, as from our side three batteries gallop forth, wheel near the edge of the ravine in which the river flows, unlimber, and quicker than it takes to tell, crash! crash! crash! the volleys from eighteen cannon rend the evening air. Through sudden clouds of white smoke red flashes dart like savage tongues of wild beasts, the gunners leap like demons to and fro in apparent fury, yet really with mechanical precision as they load and fire, reload and fire again. A little breeze lifts the veil of smoke, through the rift we catch a glimpse of the earthwork beyond the river; it is an inferno of bursting shells and clouds of dust. Woe to the men behind that torn and fire-scorched mound! We knew there could be but few of them at most; they had no artillery with which to answer ours, it seemed in truth like crushing mosquitoes with a sledge-hammer. Yet the crossing of a deep river in face of even a few determined opposers is always a ticklish piece of work and our commander meant to take no chances. The thunderous strokes of eighteen cannon are not too much to make the task of the engineers who must lay the bridge a safe one; whether even such ponderous defence is sufficient we are soon to see.

Our attention had been riveted upon the scene before us and we failed to notice that our colonel had been called away by a message from the commander of the brigade, but as he galloped back one look into his grave, determined face was enough. We knew what was coming before the sharp command rang out. "Attention, battalion! Forward, double quick, march!"

In battle, events arrive suddenly. You learn to expect it thus, yet like the final summons to a slowly dying man the order which sends you into the vortex of fire is apt to come with a shock of surprise. To us at that moment the surprise was the more keen because home-going instead of battle had so lately been our prospect, and least of all had we dreamed that, out of a dozen regiments we would be the first called upon for specially perilous duty. But that curious electric thrill which comes with the battle order, which merges your individual consciousness into the composite consciousness of a regiment sent us forward, and before we could fairly ask ourselves what it all meant, we were swiftly moving toward the river by the road over which the pontoons had passed. We had travelled that road before, we knew it well. At the edge of the plateau it turns sharply and descends by a dug way in the steep bank parallel with the stream to a small piece of open level ground close by the water; and when we reached the turn of the road where we could look down, a glance showed what the din of the cannonade had concealed. The earthwork was but part of the defence of the crossing. Below the line of our battery fire, out of reach of its shells, was a row of rifle-pits manned by sharpshooters who were doing deadly work. A few of the pontoon boats were on the ground close to the water, but none of them were launched; the train was in disorder, the engineers were being shot down at every attempt to handle their boats and our task was clearly before us. With another regiment from the brigade which was coming down by a different route through a little ravine, we must force the passage of the river. It began to be hot work as soon as we reached the dug way. Even now I can hear the waspish buzz of bullets, and feel the sting of the gravel sent into my face, as they rip through the ground at my feet. It was hotter still on the little flat when two regiments quickly arriving and huddled together with boats, waggons, and engineers, filled every inch of space. We could not return the enemy's fire and our closely packed crowd offered a pitifully easy mark for those sharp-shooters only a hundred yards away.

But many strong hands were now heaving at the boats, in spite of the fire and of falling men, three or four of them were quickly launched. Then there is a moment of desperate confusion, no one responds to the frantic but unfamiliar orders of officers to "Get into those boats!" when out of the crowd one man springs forth, leaps to the gunwale of one of the boats and waving his gun high in the air cries, "Come on, boys!" It is Corporal Joe. Instantly the boat is filled, pushed off from the bank, and the engineers with their big oars begin to row out into the stream. Another boat quickly follows, and soon a flotilla of seven of these great scows, deeply laden, bristling with bayonets, is making such speed as is possible for such awkward craft toward the opposite shore. The bullets now patter like hail upon the water; a few strike the boats or the men in them, but the fire slackens as we near the bank. Our opposers were too few to resist us when once we landed, and they began to scatter. Some ran from the rifle-pits toward the earthwork, others disappeared through the bushes. Before the shore was fairly reached our men sprang out into the water and waded to the land, the boats were emptied quicker than they had been filled; no one paused to fire; there was a pell-mell rush of bayonet charge up the river bank straight at the earthwork. It was a race between our men and the Vermonters, and to this day it has been a matter of friendly dispute as to which regiment first entered the enemy's works. But it was all quickly over. The cannonade, which ceased only when our charge began, had half buried and almost wholly paralysed the defenders of the little fort, only a few feeble shots met us and we took nearly eighty prisoners--all who were left alive when we entered.

There were some ghastly sights inside that yellow mound. A Confederate officer, torn by one of our shells lay dying; the captain of our company sprang to his side, raised him tenderly, gave him a drink from his canteen and tried to soothe his passing moments. But it was surprising how few of the defenders had been killed. The worst complaint of those brave men was that they thought our batteries meant to bury them alive!

We suffered far more severely. Our own regiment lost nineteen, the engineers between thirty and forty, and the Vermonters, who had come down to the river by a difficult though sheltered path, five or six: the cost of the crossing was between fifty and sixty men. I think it took not more than ten or fifteen minutes to fight our little battle, but those minutes were crowded with incidents. I have mentioned that of the dying Confederate officer. The handful of brave fellows who held that crossing so manfully, who made its conquest so dear to us, were heroes. We had naught but respect--nay, admiration--for them. It came to be always so. There was never a war fought more sternly, yet with less bitterness between those who met each other on bloody fields. Bank's Ford came only a month before Franklin's Crossing; there, too, we took a number of prisoners. I shall never forget the talk with a group of them as we sat down together. If you could have seen us you would have found it hard to believe that a few moments ago we had been firing into each other's faces. At the conclusion of our friendly chat, one of those Confederates said:--

"Well, boys, this war has got to be fought out. You must be good soldiers and do your duty, and we must do the same!"

On our side two incidents were pathetic in their tragedy.

Among the killed was a private, a plain man to whom writing was a task. A few days before we marched he had managed to send a letter to his wife telling her that we would soon be at home. That was the last she heard from him, and when a few weeks later the regiment marched into the streets of his native city, the wife stood on the sidewalk waiting to welcome her husband. Some one had to take her away and tell her that he was dead.

Another of the killed was our senior captain. Before the days of labour troubles, when master and men worked side by side, he was owner of a manufactory, a man beloved by all his fellow-citizens, and not least by the men who worked under him. He was near middle age, of peaceful tastes, without military aspirations, and enlisted only because of a strong sense of duty. He knew his example would be followed, he could multiply himself thus. Workmen and neighbours flocked about him; he had been their captain in industry, they made him their captain in war. He might have been a field officer, but he judged himself unfit. To serve his country where he could serve best was his only ambition. There were smarter officers in the regiment, but none so beloved as this noble Christian the light of whose example shone ever with bright and benignant ray.

When we went down to the river that day, Captain D----'s company led the line and filled the first boat. The enemy's fire was at its hottest when they were shoved off. Caring always for others more than for himself, he commanded his men to lie down and shelter themselves, but his perilous duty was to direct the rowers and guide the course of the fleet. He stood up to do it better. The risk was fatal; his commanding figure became the mark for many rifles, and he fell before we were half way across.

Such a death for such a man was nothing less than martyrdom, all the harder because he knew that hundreds of hearts were eagerly counting the hours that lay between him and a joyful welcome home. But our dear captain was a type. There were hundreds like him in our army who never reached home.

In the same boat with the heroic captain was a man from the other regiment who had been a deserter. His conduct in action was to determine his fate. How he managed to get into that first boat I do not know. He must have run far ahead of his own company, but when we neared shore he sprang out where the water was waist deep and, waiting for no one, charged alone up the bank. It looked like sure death; but he escaped unhurt, and I believe was the very first to enter the enemy's works. Of course he secured his pardon.

In every battle there are a few heroes of the type with which Stephen Crane has made us familiar, whose ingenuity in finding safe places is amusing, and whose antics make life a burden to officers and file-closers. When we reached the boat-landing the ground was absolutely bare; there was not a bush, or tree, or rock; the only possible shelter from the leaden hail was a spring,--a mere mud hole, perhaps three feet in diameter. By lying down and curling himself up in the mud and water a man might fit into it. If the desirability of land is the measure of its value, then that mud hole was priceless, for it was occupied every minute and each occupant was envied by other would-be tenants. As I came down the hill I saw one of these fellows who had just been routed out. A bullet had pierced his arm as he rose from his muddy bed, and he was dancing with pain, clasping his wounded arm with his unhurt hand and muttering angry curses upon the officer who had disturbed his repose. The vacant place was instantly taken by an old gray-bearded fellow from my own company. Over him stood the major, punching the man with his sword, and accentuating each prod with an appropriate remark.

"Come, Peter [a prod], get out of this [prod]; your life is not worth any more than mine!" (final prod). And Peter slowly arose. It makes me laugh now, as it did then, to see his white, scared face gazing agape at the major, the mud and water dripping in festoons from his hair, his beard, and his clothes.

When we were half way across the stream a bullet struck the oar of one of our rowers, close to his hand with sharp ping and shock. For an instant the man seemed paralysed; he stopped rowing and our boat's head swung round, threatening collision with the craft beside us. In that other boat was a red-haired captain, a fiery little Irish gamecock. Quick as thought he grasped the situation, and leaning far over the gunwale with uplifted sword, he hissed at the frightened oarsman:--

"Row, damn you, or I'll cut your head off!"

Never can I forget the appealing glance of the poor fellow at that impending sword, nor his sudden transformation from helpless inertness to desperate energy.

After the capture of the earthwork, without waiting for the laying of the bridge and the crossing of other troops, our regiment was advanced in skirmishing order far out across the plain, until as night fell our line was established in front of the ruins of the Bernard Mansion. That night on the skirmish line is one of the pleasantest memories of my army life, but its story belongs elsewhere.

The last fight of our regiment had been fought. We were proud of our victory, and though the little battle is barely noticed in military histories, it has an interest which makes it memorable to those who were there. It was the prelude of a great drama. The advance of our division of the Sixth Corps was a reconnaissance in force with the object of checking, if possible, Lee's northward movement, and in our little battle at Franklin's Crossing at the Rappahannock, the first blood of the great Gettysburg campaign was shed.

One Young Soldier

The generous sentiment which would crown every one who fell in our Great War with the hero's wreath may be excessive, yet a personal acquaintance with almost any random portion of that enormous death-roll will certainly make one feel that its length is its least significance.

Not long ago I made a pilgrimage to my native village. Of course the old cemetery had to be visited. I knew the place was full of ghosts of other days, but a strange thrill went through me as I found the frequent stones inscribed with the names of former schoolmates or comrades who had fallen in the war.

Here was one that said, "Captain R. S----, staff-officer--killed at the battle of the Wilderness." The silent stone recalled dear friends and neighbours and the sacrifice of their only son, the most high-spirited and pluckiest young fellow in the town, one of those ready and resourceful characters to whom the word "impossible" is a stranger. A little farther on, under the shadow of ancient cedars, were two marble shafts. One bore the name of gentle, reticent, but forceful W. P----, and the fateful words, "Fell at the Battle of Bull Run." How memory brings back the rush of feeling with which the tidings of his death came to us, his schoolmates from whom he had so lately parted!

The other monument, in its simple uprightness, seemed a fit memorial for a knightly soul. Noble Harry B----! We who knew him said to ourselves, How can the world spare such as he! But the legend on the marble told how he met his death while in command of a battery in Sheridan's great fight at Cedar Creek.

I wandered on till I came to an humble stone whose rudely pathetic inscription, telling how it was "erected to his memory by his wife," touched me deeply. Bluff, hearty Henry H---- was one of my own company who fell on the bloody field of Salem Heights. Just a plain man, only a private, no conspicuous hero, yet one of those faithfully courageous souls who, when thick-flying bullets are droning their deadly song, and the scorching breath of battle tries the line, never give captain or file-closers a moment's anxiety. You could always depend upon "Hank" to stand like a rock with his face to the foe, and to waste no shots on empty air. And one reason for the Homeric deadliness of our war was that both in the brown-clad ranks of the Southrons and among the blue-coated Men of the North there were thousands like him.

I turned from the place in pensive mood. Remembering the awful harvest of great battle-fields I said to myself: Only a small fraction of it is planted in such peaceful places as this, yet this is a fair example of its lesson. Every village graveyard throughout our broad land tells the same story. Death waited with grim confidence for the choice spirits in that war, and the best of us who took our share in it are not those who live to tell its story.

Then thought travelled afar to the banks of the Rappahannock and its camps and battle-fields. I dreamed that once more I stood amid the familiar, blue-clad throng, yet there was a difference. Past and present seemed to mingle. Here and there a face would vanish or a well-remembered voice fail, grow faint and far off, or suddenly become silent, and among these one, the first sought for, the most desired, the face and voice of my tent-mate. I awoke from my dream, remembering that he, too, now belongs to the army of the nobly fallen.

But ours was no common friendship. We had been schoolmates before we became comrades, then tent-mates, finally brothers like David and Jonathan.

We slept under one blanket; we shared our rations and our confidences; and if we did not fight side by side, that was in part because he was corporal at the right of the first platoon and my place was at the other end of the line, but also in part because he had a way of doing such startlingly original things in the face of danger.

His image rises before me now. There he stands, tall, erect, balanced on one foot while he nervously taps the ground with the other and looks at me with that mocking expression all his own, that premonitory grin provoked by some latent jest upon my moralising.

This bantering trick, so common with him, breaking out as it often did at most unexpected and often atrociously inappropriate moments, was an index of the side of his character most open to the general eye. Joe was but eighteen years old when he enlisted, just the age when the boy is passing into the man; a good six feet in stature, without an ounce of spare flesh, long armed, loose-jointed, at once too undeveloped and too full of individuality to wear any conventional garb with ease, so that Uncle Sam's shop-made and ill-fitting uniform hung upon his youthful but powerful frame with anything but martial impressiveness. This, however, troubled him little. An undue care for appearance was never one of his foibles, and the pomp and circumstance of war always smote his keen Yankee sense of the ludicrous. Yet he had withal the manner and the heart of a gentleman, and if you looked into those merry yet piercing eyes, or listened for five minutes to the original ideas expressed by that well modulated and pleasant voice with just a suspicion of "away-down-East" accent in it, you would be compelled to feel that in this boy there was the making of no common man.

For a long time Joe was a puzzle to his comrades. They could not understand why such a great boy, and one too, so unmilitary in his ways, should be a corporal. Some of the older men resented it. And then, his persistent practical joking, his careless independence and smiling indifference to rebuke or criticism was perplexing, not to say exasperating. Yet no one could positively dislike him. He might be provoking at times, yet every one knew him incapable of anything mean, and his untiring good-nature and open-handed generosity made warm friends for him from the very start.

The captain certainly showed himself a good judge of men when he made Joe a corporal, though it took time to justify the choice, and the honours of office sat but lightly upon the recipient. Not until our days of battle came did Joe show any care for military distinction, and he never bothered himself about the promotion which others sought so eagerly.

As everybody knows, the corporal's rank is lowest in the company, only a step above the position of a private, and the distinguishing badge is that of the "chevrons," two triangular stripes on the sleeves of the coat. So little did Corporal Joe prize his office that he would not at first wear these; but the time speedily came when he found them desirable. We were hurried into the field, and when at Hagerstown in Maryland we joined the brigade to which we were assigned, we found ourselves in a strictly guarded camp. The men were allowed to pass the gates only in squads in charge of a non-commissioned officer. And now Joe, seeing that the chevrons might be useful, instead of applying to the commissary for a regulation set, cut strips of light blue from the skirt of his overcoat and rudely sewed them on the sleeve of one arm only. Then he proceeded to the gate and attempted to pass the guard, who of course stopped him.

"You have no non-commissioned officer with you. Only a squad in charge of a serjeant or corporal can pass."

Joe held out the newly adorned arm, exclaiming, "Is not _that_ corporal enough for you?"

The guard, a member of a veteran regiment, was perplexed yet obdurate.

"Yes, you may be a corporal, but where is your squad?"

Quick as a flash Joe wheeled and showed the other, the plain coat-sleeve.

"There! Isn't _that_ squad enough for you?"

And then the lieutenant in command of the guard, who had watched the whole performance broke into a hearty laugh and said,--

"You may pass. We will let you go as a non-commissioned squad."

It is to be feared that Joe was, for a long time, a thorn in the side of some of our company officers. Indeed I do not think that our orderly serjeant, a very business-like and soldierly German with a prejudice against the loose ways of our volunteer service, ever became reconciled to him.

We were a hastily enlisted regiment, and were rushed to the front and into active service imperfectly equipped. Our arms were at first old Harper's Ferry muskets with locks converted from flint to percussion. Want of respect for these antique weapons made us too careless of their condition: a grave military fault which was a grief and vexation to the orderly and also to our conscientious first lieutenant. At "inspection" one morning that officer found fault, justly enough, with Joe's gun. Taking it from its owner and holding it out before us all, he said sternly,--

"Corporal, what sort of an example is this to set before the company? Look at the disgraceful condition of this musket!--of what use would such a weapon be if we should be called into action?"

With his peculiar and provoking grin, and in that bland and childlike tone which he assumed so readily, Joe impudently answered,--

"Why, lieutenant, if we get into a fight I expect to rely on my bayonet!"

Looking back upon this and similar incidents of our earlier service, I often wonder how Joe kept his chevrons at all. But when the stress of hard service came and we entered the toil and hardship of the march through the enemy's country, Joe's real quality began to make itself felt too strongly, both by men and officers, to make it worth while, or indeed safe, to notice his little irregularities; for whoever else lagged or straggled it was never Joe; no matter how dangerous or disagreeable the picket or fatigue duty he was never the one to shirk or complain. The officers found that for real service here was one man absolutely dependable; the men were braced by his cheerful example, and they discovered moreover that Joe was a good one to go to in trouble. Had an improvident comrade devoured his three days' rations prematurely? Joe was always ready to divide his own remaining hard-tack. Was some extra load to be carried,--an axe, for instance?--he would cheerfully add it to his own. A sort of admiration for Joe began to appear, yet with reservations. For one thing there was no telling who would be the next victim of one of his pranks. Bill B---- remembers to this day how his supper was spoiled one evening by Joe's ghastly speculation about the method of the fattening of our pork. And I remember a night on the picket reserve when a circle of men lay asleep with their feet toward the embers of a dying fire, and Joe, ever-wakeful, quietly stealing out of the group, gathered a mighty armful of dry brush, gently deposited it upon the coals, and as the blaze mounted and the heat grew fierce, amused himself with the contortions of the roasted-out sleepers and with their drowsy profanity as they gradually awoke. He never swore himself, but I suspected at times that he took a sinful delight in the ingeniously blasphemous explosions of some of his comrades.

Then too, his ways were original. He had a genius for cookery, and the messes he concocted from meagre and sometimes unfamiliar materials were the wonder, and often the horror of his unsophisticated and conservative comrades; yet he was strangely fastidious withal. When a too greedy or too careless commissariat sent us boxes of ancient hard-tack, mementoes of last year's campaign, marked "White House" or "Harrison's Landing," whose mouldy contents were living exponents of the doctrine of evolution, Joe would not eat a single cracker without careful dissection and removal of every inhabitant, though we were near starving. And though careless of outward appearances, he was rigid in certain personal habits. So the men thought when they saw how, even in the dead of winter, he would have his frequent bath, even if he had to break the ice in some pond or stream for it.

Moreover, there were times when his tireless cheerfulness and strength seemed discordant and untimely. When you have been marching all day loaded like a pack mule with knapsack, haversack, canteen, cartridge-box, and gun; when every bone aches and every nerve is unstrung, it becomes an added bitterness to have in the ranks a mere boy whose vitality rises in jest and song above the common misery of stalwart men. At such times I have heard men swear at Joe with deep and apprehensive curses which showed that they felt him a little uncanny.

But I knew him as few others did. A kinder tent-mate no man ever had; my heart melts even now when I recall his unvarying gentleness and consideration; how, often after a weary day's march when at last halt was called and arms stacked and fuel must be sought for the camp-fire, he would look at me with gravely compassionate eyes and say, "You take care of the duds and get the coffee-pot ready, and I'll find the wood." Which meant, "Poor worn-out comrade, take it easy and rest, and let me do the work!"--though I think he was never too tired to enjoy the charge on the nearest fence and the scrimmage for the often too scarce rails. And always in all our rude house-keeping he would take to himself more than his share of the heaviest tasks. It was beautiful also to see his devotion to his absent father, between whom and himself an affectionate comradeship existed which was none too common in those days. His letters, almost all of them to his father, were more frequent than those of any man in the company. Much of the time he wrote daily; he used to say, "I keep my diary in this way." Under his light and effervescent manner there was strong and manly thoughtfulness which showed itself even in his jests. One of these is worth recording, not only as illustration of his originality, but for its inherent wisdom and its epigrammatic form.

On the march through the Virginia hill country, foraging, though forbidden by general orders, became the fashion. This precisely suited Joe's enterprising disposition, and by his dashing raids upon pigs and chickens he made a name for himself in the regiment. After one of these exploits, rather bolder than usual, a comrade whose conscience was tender in such matters ventured to remonstrate with him. The Suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act was just then a subject of agitating discussion throughout the country and the camps, and I shall never forget either the finely simulated sternness or the remarkable adaptation of Joe's crushing reply to his scrupulous friend.