IN the spring of the year 1862 General Buell’s big army lay in camp,
licking itself into shape for the campaign which resulted in the victory
at Shiloh. It was a raw, untrained army, although some of its fractions
had seen hard enough service, with a good deal of fighting, in the
mountains of Western Virginia, and in Kentucky. The war was young and
soldiering a new industry, imperfectly understood by the young American
of the period, who found some features of it not altogether to his
liking. Chief among these was that essential part of discipline,
subordination. To one imbued from infancy with the fascinating fallacy
that all men are born equal, unquestioning submission to authority is not
easily mastered, and the American volunteer soldier in his “green and
salad days” is among the worst known. That is how it happened that one
of Buell’s men, Private Bennett Story Greene, committed the indiscretion
of striking his officer. Later in the war he would not have done that;
like Sir Andrew Aguecheek, he would have “seen him damned” first. But
time for reformation of his military manners was denied him: he was
promptly arrested on complaint of the officer, tried by court-martial and
sentenced to be shot.
“You might have thrashed me and let it go at that,” said the condemned
man to the complaining witness; “that is what you used to do at school,
when you were plain Will Dudley and I was as good as you. Nobody saw me
strike you; discipline would not have suffered much.”
“Ben Greene, I guess you are right about that,” said the lieutenant.
“Will you forgive me? That is what I came to see you about.”
There was no reply, and an officer putting his head in at the door of the
guard-tent where the conversation had occurred, explained that the time
allowed for the interview had expired. The next morning, when in the
presence of the whole brigade Private Greene was shot to death by a squad
of his comrades, Lieutenant Dudley turned his back upon the sorry
performance and muttered a prayer for mercy, in which himself was
included.
A few weeks afterward, as Buell’s leading division was being ferried over
the Tennessee River to assist in succoring Grant’s beaten army, night was
coming on, black and stormy. Through the wreck of battle the division
moved, inch by inch, in the direction of the enemy, who had withdrawn a
little to reform his lines. But for the lightning the darkness was
absolute. Never for a moment did it cease, and ever when the thunder did
not crack and roar were heard the moans of the wounded among whom the men
felt their way with their feet, and upon whom they stumbled in the gloom.
The dead were there, too—there were dead a-plenty.
In the first faint gray of the morning, when the swarming advance had
paused to resume something of definition as a line of battle, and
skirmishers had been thrown forward, word was passed along to call the
roll. The first sergeant of Lieutenant Dudley’s company stepped to the
front and began to name the men in alphabetical order. He had no written
roll, but a good memory. The men answered to their names as he ran down
the alphabet to G.
“Gorham.”
“Here!”
“Grayrock.”
“Here!”
The sergeant’s good memory was affected by habit:
“Greene.”
“Here!”
The response was clear, distinct, unmistakable!
A sudden movement, an agitation of the entire company front, as from an
electric shock, attested the startling character of the incident. The
sergeant paled and paused. The captain strode quickly to his side and
said sharply:
“Call that name again.”
Apparently the Society for Psychical Research is not first in the field
of curiosity concerning the Unknown.
“Bennett Greene.”
“Here!”
All faces turned in the direction of the familiar voice; the two men
between whom in the order of stature Greene had commonly stood in line
turned and squarely confronted each other.
“Once more,” commanded the inexorable investigator, and once more came—a
trifle tremulously—the name of the dead man:
“Bennett Story Greene.”
“Here!”
At that instant a single rifle-shot was heard, away to the front, beyond
the skirmish-line, followed, almost attended, by the savage hiss of an
approaching bullet which passing through the line, struck audibly,
punctuating as with a full stop the captain’s exclamation, “What the
devil does it mean?”
Lieutenant Dudley pushed through the ranks from his place in the rear.
“It means this,” he said, throwing open his coat and displaying a visibly
broadening stain of crimson on his breast. His knees gave way; he fell
awkwardly and lay dead.
A little later the regiment was ordered out of line to relieve the
congested front, and through some misplay in the game of battle was not
again under fire. Nor did Bennett Greene, expert in military executions,
ever again signify his presence at one.