The best soldier of our staff was Lieutenant Herman Brayle, one of the
two aides-de-camp. I don't remember where the general picked him up;
from some Ohio regiment, I think; none of us had previously known him,
and it would have been strange if we had, for no two of us came from the
same State, nor even from adjoining States. The general seemed to think
that a position on his staff was a distinction that should be so
judiciously conferred as not to beget any sectional jealousies and
imperil the integrity of that part of the country which was still an
integer. He would not even choose officers from his own command, but by
some jugglery at department headquarters obtained them from other
brigades. Under such circumstances, a man's services had to be very
distinguished indeed to be heard of by his family and the friends of his
youth; and "the speaking trump of fame" was a trifle hoarse from
loquacity, anyhow.
Lieutenant Brayle was more than six feet in height and of splendid
proportions, with the light hair and gray-blue eyes which men so gifted
usually find associated with a high order of courage. As he was commonly
in full uniform, especially in action, when most officers are content to
be less flamboyantly attired, he was a very striking and conspicuous
figure. As to the rest, he had a gentleman's manners, a scholar's head,
and a lion's heart. His age was about thirty.
We all soon came to like Brayle as much as we admired him, and it was
with sincere concern that in the engagement at Stone's River--our first
action after he joined us--we observed that he had one most
objectionable and unsoldierly quality: he was vain of his courage.
During all the vicissitudes and mutations of that hideous encounter,
whether our troops were fighting in the open cotton fields, in the cedar
thickets, or behind the railway embankment, he did not once take cover,
except when sternly commanded to do so by the general, who usually had
other things to think of than the lives of his staff officers--or those
of his men, for that matter.
In every later engagement while Brayle was with us it was the same way.
He would sit his horse like an equestrian statue, in a storm of bullets
and grape, in the most exposed places--wherever, in fact, duty,
requiring him to go, permitted him to remain--when, without trouble and
with distinct advantage to his reputation for common sense, he might
have been in such security as is possible on a battlefield in the brief
intervals of personal inaction.
On foot, from necessity or in deference to his dismounted commander or
associates, his conduct was the same. He would stand like a rock in the
open when officers and men alike had taken to cover; while men older in
service and years, higher in rank and of unquestionable intrepidity,
were loyally preserving behind the crest of a hill lives infinitely
precious to their country, this fellow would stand, equally idle, on the
ridge, facing in the direction of the sharpest fire.
When battles are going on in open ground it frequently occurs that the
opposing lines, confronting each other within a stone's throw for hours,
hug the earth as closely as if they loved it. The line officers in their
proper places flatten themselves no less, and the field officers, their
horses all killed or sent to the rear, crouch beneath the infernal
canopy of hissing lead and screaming iron without a thought of personal
dignity.
In such circumstances the life of a staff officer of a brigade is
distinctly "not a happy one," mainly because of its precarious tenure
and the unnerving alternations of emotion to which he is exposed. From a
position of that comparative security from which a civilian would
ascribe his escape to a "miracle," he may be despatched with an order to
some commander of a prone regiment in the front line--a person for the
moment inconspicuous and not always easy to find without a deal of
search among men somewhat preoccupied, and in a din in which question
and answer alike must be imparted in the sign language. It is customary
in such cases to duck the head and scuttle away on a keen run, an object
of lively interest to some thousands of admiring marksmen. In returning
--well, it is not customary to return.
Brayle's practice was different. He would consign his horse to the care
of an orderly,--he loved his horse,--and walk quietly away on his
perilous errand with never a stoop of the back, his splendid figure,
accentuated by his uniform, holding the eye with a strange fascination.
We watched him with suspended breath, our hearts in our mouths. On one
occasion of this kind, indeed, one of our number, an impetuous
stammerer, was so possessed by his emotion that he shouted at me:
"I'll b-b-bet you t-two d-d-dollars they d-drop him b-b-before he g-gets
to that d-d-ditch!"