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.
"See here! Don't you know that war is a suspension of the Ten
Commandments?"
We could not but feel that there was something more than ordinary in
this boy; yet even his few intimates--those who thought they knew
him--were scarcely prepared for the revelation of his character which
was to come with the test of battle.
On the day when we stormed the Marye's Hill, after we had gained the
crest and the foe was fleeing before us, we pushed on through the woods
that crowned the height until we came suddenly upon an open space
dotted with the stumps of trees that had been felled for Confederate
camp-fires. On the other side of this opening were two guns, the
section of a battery which our enemies had hastily drawn up in a brave
attempt to check our advance, and our captain had scarcely time to
shout, "Lie down, quick!" before a volley of grape-shot whizzed and
hummed about us and laid several of our men low. The lieutenant-colonel
called for volunteers, and a thin and hasty skirmish line disappeared
among the stumps. Another volley of grape and another came, and then,
far to the front, more than half way between us and the enemy two rifle
shots rang out, and the captain of the battery fell. The gunners,
apparently dismayed at the loss of their commander and at such near and
mysterious foes, hastily limbered up their pieces and hurried them
away. We were as much astonished and mystified as they, until presently
Joe, and a companion from another regiment whom he had picked up, rose
from among the stumps and came sauntering into the line. Those two bold
fellows had slipped out beyond the skirmish line, and, eyeing the
enemy's guns like cats, they had dropped behind the stumps as soon as
they saw the gunners about to fire; then, when the grape ceased
rattling about them, up again and half running, half creeping, they had
thus worked their way forward until they were within fifty yards of the
battery; then, watching their chance both aimed together at the captain
and brought him down.
The colonel thanked Corporal Joe before the regiment for silencing the
battery, and that was all the reward he received, or indeed cared for.
Absolute fearlessness is rare. Perhaps it does not exist in the heart
of a sane man. The bravest are usually like our heroic lieutenant-colonel,
who, when an officer said to him one day, "Colonel, you don't seem to
know what fear is," replied in his abrupt way,--
"All a mistake. I am always afraid, miserably afraid, whenever I go
into battle, but of course it would never do to show it!"
Yet there are exceptional characters for whom the voice of the battle
siren possesses irresistible fascination,--men whose overmastering
delight in danger seems to scare their very fears and send them
slinking away to hide in some obscure corner of their souls. After our
days at Marye's Hill and Salem Heights, we began to see such a man in
Joe, and from that time onward his career, which was marked by a
continued series of daring exploits, confirmed the judgment. Moreover,
it was characteristic of the man that his peril-defying deeds were
never the result of any rage of battle. They were always either
deliberately planned, or else the quick and cool acceptance of some
desperate chance.
It was my good fortune to be with him in one of the mildest of these
adventures. After the brilliant affair at Franklin's Crossing just
before the northward march of the army toward Gettysburg, our regiment
was sent out beyond the captured earthworks as skirmishers. Night was
coming on by the time our line was established, and we found ourselves
in a romantic but risky position.
We were occupying the grounds of the old Bernard House. Across the
broad driveways and once pleasant lawns and gardens, now neglected and
weed-grown, we Northern invaders had stretched our picket line. Just
behind us, its ruined and fire-stained walls touched with the mystery
of moonlight, lay all that was left of the once proud mansion. In days
not so very long gone by, on just such nights as this, those hospitable
halls and the noble grounds had been alive with the festive gathering
of Virginia's wit and beauty. Their spirits seemed to haunt the scene,
so silent now save for the low-toned orders and warnings of our
officers. In front of the ruined mansion stood a grove of ancient and
noble oaks. They served to hide us, but they were not to be trusted.
They also furnished a dangerous screen through which the enemy might
easily come upon us unaware. So the lieutenant-colonel evidently
thought, for he came to our company and asked quietly for half-a-dozen
volunteers to act as scouts.
I think the colonel came to our company because he knew Joe was there,
and he instantly responded. But I have often wondered at the strange
impulse which seemed to compel me and the others to step forth by his
side. After the men once knew him, Joe never went begging for
followers; there was an irresistible infection in his example, and an
allurement in his cheerful fearlessness that not only made men forget
peril, but made it seem a privilege to go with him. It was so afterward
in affairs compared to which our adventure of that night was but a
pleasure trip.
The colonel himself led us out to the further edge of the grove, posted
us in couples behind trees, and gave us our instructions which were,
"Watch carefully for any signs of the enemy. Their picket line is out
there somewhere in front of you; if you see any movement do not fire,
but come in quietly and report, and in any case come in quietly at
daybreak."
He left us; we heard his retreating footsteps until he reached the
line, and then we began to realise the situation. We were between two
possible and quite probable fires. It was bright moonlight; our
regiment as we afterwards discovered, was perilously advanced and
isolated; if by any chance the enemy knew our position there would be
every temptation to attack, and, if that happened, even if they should
advance their skirmishers, we scouts would certainly catch it from both
sides, and the worst danger was from our own men. Very few of them
would know we were outside the line, and it was wholly unlikely that we
could "come in quietly and report" without having a hundred rifles
levelled at us. When we did come in at daybreak one of us narrowly
escaped death at the hands of a comrade in his own company, who, in the
gray light, mistook him for a "Reb" and tried to shoot him. The colonel
knew we were likely to be sacrificed, and therefore his call for
volunteers.
But Joe was in his element. "This is bully!" he exclaimed, as he
surveyed the scene when we were left alone. "No officers will bother us
here to-night; they think too much of keeping their precious skins
whole to stir outside the line."
The prospect was certainly fascinating. Behind us the giant oaks
through whose shadows the moonbeams sifted their uncertain rays; before
us a sweet expanse of pale-green meadow, weird with the mingled effect
of tenuous curling mists and moonlight, shot across here and there with
mysterious hedgerows and indistinct tree clumps, the possible and as we
found in the morning, the actual cover of the foeman's skirmishers--a
strange combination of peaceful beauty and lurking death.
The sounds too, which came to us through the still and misty air were
full of ominous significance. Through the dark of the grove, the
anxious but subdued voices of our officers patrolling the line, keeping
the wearied pickets awake and watchful; beyond through the moonlight
across the meadow the distant rumble from the railroad, the noise of
unloading cars and loading wagons and the shouts of teamsters at the
station within the enemy's lines perhaps a mile away, warning us that
by morning he would be heavily reinforced.
We watched as the night wore away, half-expecting, half-dreading what
each moment might spring upon us, but all was as still as death in that
pale field, until some time after midnight a strange white Shape came
moving through the mists. We watched it anxiously, perhaps at that
chill hour a little apprehensively, but as it drew near our fears were
banished. It was a poor old worn-out war-horse turned loose to die. We
watched him grazing quietly in the meadow, and then Joe's instinct for
adventure awoke.
"I say, let's go and capture that old beast. What a lark it would be to
drive him before us into the line in the morning and make the boys
think we had taken a prisoner!"
"No, sir," I replied; "we don't know where the enemy's skirmishers are,
but I for one am just as near them as I want to be!"
It was well for Joe that he had a more cautious comrade with him, for
he yielded at last to the counsels of manifest prudence; but all night
long he looked at that old white horse with longing eyes.
We had not more than safely reached our company in the morning before
the foe discovered himself, and the venerable oaks grew vocal with
singing bullets; but I shall always cherish the memory of that risky
but harmless adventure in Joe's dear company, for he and I were soon to
part.
I have often wondered if the shadow of his fate did not even then come
over him at times! Recklessly cheerful as he always was in the face of
danger or difficulty, there were moments when, to me at least, he
showed another mood. In those gloomy days after the tragedy of the
first Fredericksburg, when the issue of the great conflict seemed
doubtful, he said to me one day:--
"You and I are young men; life is all before us, but what will our
lives be worth in this country if the South succeeds? For my part I do
not mean to live to see it."
We had in our company a lot of very young fellows, some of them less
than eighteen years old, whose ardent patriotism and willing courage
and endurance shamed many of their elders. We were talking one day
about the readiness of these bright boys to face death and danger, when
Joe said very solemnly:
"Yes! the more a man's life is worth, the less he cares for it."
A year had passed since our summer night's adventure under the oaks,
and Joe had been made a commissioned officer in another regiment. Men
of ours, whose time had expired, flocked to him to re-enlist under his
command, and his company was largely composed of old comrades. His next
real service was in that memorable and bloody siege of Petersburg. I
met him once during the winter; he had been at home on furlough and I
have always suspected that he came away with a heart wound,--the only
wound he ever received until he met his death. We were boys when first
we were thrown together, and bashful about such things, and intimate as
I afterwards became with him he was always reticent about his
love-affairs; but I had a feeling that one fair girl at home could have
told why Joe returned to his perilous duty robbed of that
light-heartedness which used to diffuse itself about him like an
atmosphere. Was it that, or was it the gloom of the apparently endless
conflict which had entered his soul? I could never be quite sure.
He told me in curt phrase all about the position of his regiment close
by that famous redoubt to which the soldiers had given the significant
name of "Fort Hell," and then he said, "Some day, I think soon, Grant
is going to break through those lines, and when he does, I am going to
distinguish myself or get killed!"
Shortly after his return to the post of duty I had a letter from him
which showed an exaggerated gleam of his old humour. It told of the
loss of a number of his men in the incessant picket firing and of his
own narrow escapes, and then contrasting my prospects with his own, he
said, "As for me I am wedded to the Goddess of Liberty, and, by Jove!
the old girl met me half way and gave me my shoulder-straps for
marrying her. I like my spouse; though it is well I am not of a jealous
disposition, for the Old Lady has now near a million husbands and is on
the lookout for more!
Then we heard of another of his characteristic escapades. It was
evident that some change had taken place in the disposition of the
enemy's troops. The officer in charge of the picket line was anxious to
know what this meant, and Joe at once offered to investigate. Taking
two men with him he pretended to desert to the enemy. The opposing
lines were close together, and between them all was bare and open, so
that no secrecy could be practised. Joe and his two companions sprang
across the trenches and ran toward the Confederates, shouting as they
neared them,--
"Say, Johnnies, will you take deserters?" The fire ceased and the
answer came, "Yes, Billy, come on! come right in!"
Then Joe left his two men and went up closer for further parley.
"Johnnies, we want to come in, but we're rather afraid of you
Twenty-second South Carolina fellows!" and the reply was,--
"Oh, you needn't be afraid, we're not the Twenty-second South Carolina,
they were sent away from here yesterday. We're the Eighteenth Georgia!"
This was precisely the information he wanted, and with a little more
artful parley he edged backwards, watching his chance, and then sending
his men before him to their own lines, he ran back himself, reaching
shelter barely in time, escaping unhurt through the storm of bullets
which his baffled and enraged foes sent after him.
The great day came at last, the day of that awful assault on the
Petersburg entrenchments. Joe had been on picket all night and,
according to army rules would have been exempt from duty for the next
twenty-four hours. But as he came in from his weary and perilous night
watch, in the gray dawn he saw the preparation for the struggle and
heard a call for volunteers. A "forlorn hope," an officer and thirty
men, were wanted to lead the storming column and drive in the enemy's
entrenched pickets. Joe at once offered himself; men were always ready
to follow whither he led, and more than thirty came forward at once.
Out from the massed lines in the dim light of dusky dawn the devoted
little band moved. Those who were with him said that, as they came to
the picket posts,--rifle-pits with five or six men in each,--Joe would
rush far ahead of his men straight up to the rifle-pit with drawn sword
and imperious command.
"Throw down your arms and surrender!"
And thus by sheer boldness he actually captured a half-dozen groups of
pickets in succession, until at last his summons was answered by a
volley, and one bullet struck him in the breast. The wound, his first
(unless it was that heart wound), was his last and mortal.
As we, his old comrades, far from the bloody field heard the news, we
could scarcely believe it. Death in battle was common enough God knows,
in those dreadful days; but somehow Joe had always seemed to bear a
charmed life. It was hard to think of him among the slain. Yet there
were many "I told you so's," and not a few with wise wag of prudent
head declared, "It was bound to come to Joe, he was always rash; this
time foolhardy."
But such talk was little heeded by those of us who knew Joe. We knew
too well that even in most desperate moments he would think with
melting heart of the brave men under his command, and take any risk to
spare them. We also knew how thoroughly he believed that audacity was
the right hand of success. Such men are the nerve of an army. There
never are very many of them; very few survive a great war, for
victories are won by their blood. They are literally offerings upon the
altar of their country. Under Joe's rude jest about the Goddess of
Liberty I knew there was the feeling that his life was devoted to the
land he loved with passionate ardour.
When the news of Petersburg came, our old lieutenant-colonel, a
grizzled veteran who had been through most of the great battles of the
war came to me and eagerly asked,--"Had I heard from Joe?" I told him.
The tears came into his eyes as he turned away exclaiming,--
"My God! Such men sacrificed!"
Sacrifice
Browning in a well-known poem describes the Emperor Napoleon at
Ratisbon. He is standing on a little mound watching the storming of the
city by his army and waiting anxiously for the result. Suddenly
"Out 'twixt the battery smoke there flew
A rider bound on bound
Full galloping--"
The rider is an aide, a mere boy; he is desperately wounded, "his
breast all but shot in two," yet he conceals his hurt, he reaches the
Emperor, flings himself from his horse and in proud tones announces the
victory of the legions and proclaims the glory of Napoleon.
"The Chiefs eye flashed: but presently
Softened itself as sheathes
A film the mother eagle's eye
When her bruised eaglet breathes.
'You're wounded!' 'Nay,' the soldier's pride
Touched to the quick, he said
'I'm killed, Sire!' and his Chief beside,
Smiling the boy fell dead."
In his account of the battle of Gettysburg General Doubleday relates an
incident which, as he says, is like this one of Ratisbon. "After the
fierce fight in the railroad cut on the first day of the battle, an
officer of the Sixth Wisconsin approached Lieutenant-Colonel Dawes, the
commander of the regiment. The colonel supposed from the firm and erect
attitude of the man that he came to report for orders of some kind: but
the compressed lips told a different story. With a great effort the
officer said: 'Tell them at home that I died like a man and a soldier!'
He threw open his breast, displayed a ghastly wound and dropped dead at
the colonel's feet."
The two incidents are indeed similar but with a profound difference of
tone. The note struck by Napoleon's aide is the brilliant one of glory;
that which vibrates in the Wisconsin officer's dying words is the
proudly pathetic chord of _home_.
It was characteristic of our army,--nay, of our war and of both the
contending armies,--Union and Confederate. Neither of us fought for
conquest or for glory, but a heritage of clashing principles woven by
no will of ours into the very beginnings of our nation's history,
involving its very life, had come at last in our day to the inevitable
and awful arbitrament of battle.
We who fought in that war were not professional soldiers: our gathered
hosts, our regiments and companies were composed of friends and
neighbours, segments of the clustering homes from which and for the
sake of which we had gone forth, and we knew always that though far
away we were not unwatched. In those creepy moments on the verge of
battle when amid whizz of waspish bullets and angry echo of skirmish
rifles the grim shadow of bloody strife rolled toward us, many a boy
would hear in his soul the voice of his father's parting exhortation to
play the man; many a young fellow would say to himself, as the image of
the dear girl who shyly and tearfully bade him good-bye rose before
him, "She shall never have reason to be ashamed of me;" and the
husband, while his thoughts fly far away to the home where wife and
children wait for him, would pray, "God protect them if I fall; but let
me not disgrace them!"
The constant question in our hearts was, "What will the folks at home
say about us?"
I have known sick men, really unfit for duty, who, when rumours of "a
move" came, would keep out of the surgeon's way, and when their
regiment was called into action would shoulder their rifles and drag
themselves along with their comrades for fear some report that they had
shirked might travel home. We fought with the feeling that we were
under the straining eyes of those who loved us and had sent us forth,
whose approval we valued more than life.