Many humorous incidents, says a writer in the _Century Magazine_,
occurred on battlefields. A Confederate colonel ran ahead of his
regiment at Malvern Hill, and, discovering that the men were not
following him as closely as he wished, he uttered a fierce oath and
exclaimed: “Come on! Do you want to live forever?” The appeal was
irresistible, and many a poor fellow who had laughed at the colonel’s
queer exhortation laid down his life soon after.
A shell struck the wheel of a Federal fieldpiece toward the close of
the engagement at Fair Oaks, shivering the spokes and dismantling the
cannon. “Well, isn’t it lucky that didn’t happen before we used up
all our ammunition,” said one of the artillerists as he crawled from
beneath the gun.
When General Pope was falling back before Lee’s advance in the Virginia
Valley, his own soldiers thought his bulletins and orders somewhat
strained in their rhetoric. At one of the numerous running engagements
that marked the disastrous campaign, a private in one of the Western
regiments was mortally wounded by a shell. Seeing the man’s condition,
a chaplain knelt beside him, and, opening his Bible at random, read out
Sampson’s slaughter of the Philistines with the jaw-bone of an ass.
He had not quite finished, when, as the story runs, the poor fellow
interrupted the reading by saying: “Hold on, chaplain. Don’t deceive a
dying man. Isn’t the name of John Pope signed to that?”
A column of troops was pushing forward over the long and winding road
in Thoroughfare Gap to head off Lee after his retreat across the
Potomac at the close of the Gettysburg campaign. Suddenly the signal
officer who accompanied the general in command discovered that some of
his men, posted on a high hill in the rear, were reporting the presence
of a considerable body of Confederate troops on top of the bluffs
to their right. A halt was at once sounded, and the leading brigade
ordered forward to uncover the enemy’s position. The regiments were
soon scrambling up the steep incline, officers and men gallantly racing
to see who could reach the crest first. A young lieutenant and some
half dozen men gained the advance, but at the end of what they deemed
a perilous climb they were thrown into convulsions of laughter at
discovering that what the signal men took for Confederate troops were
only a tolerably large flock of sheep. As the leaders in this forlorn
hope rolled on the grass in a paroxysm of merriment they laughed all
the louder at seeing the pale but determined faces of their comrades,
who, of course, came up fully expecting a desperate hand-to-hand
struggle. It is perhaps needless to say the brigade supped on mutton
that evening.
As the army was crossing South Mountain the day before the battle of
Antietam, General McClellan rode along the side of the moving column.
Overtaking a favorite Zouave regiment, he exclaimed, with his natural
_bonhommie_: “Well, and how is Old Fifth this evening?” “First-rate,
General,” replied one of the Zouaves. “But we’d be better off if
we weren’t living so much on supposition.” “Supposition?” said the
General, in a puzzled tone. “What do you mean by that?” “It’s easily
explained, sir. You see we expected to get our rations yesterday; but
as we didn’t, we’re living on the supposition that we did.” “Ah, I
understand; you shall have your rations, Zouzous, to-night,” replied
the General, putting spurs to his horse to escape the cheers of his
regiment. And he kept his promise.