A PERSONAL SORROW
After my return from this fight, it was my lot to undergo the saddest
experience of my war life.
My brother, one year my junior, had just joined the command, when we
went with a scouting party toward the railroad and met a small party of
Union soldiers. It was the first time my brother had been on the firing
line. He and I were on the extreme left of the line on the edge of a
road, in touch with each other, and we received the first fire from the
enemy. He was killed instantly and never spoke, but looked straight at
me, with a silent understanding reflected in his eyes, and I caught him
as he fell. The ball that killed him struck near his heart and passed
through his body. I wrapped his body in a blanket and carried it sixty
miles until I reached the main column. Then Gen. S. D. Lee furnished me
an ambulance, and I carried the body to Pontotoc, Miss., for burial.
After the war I placed a monument over the grave of this beloved brother
and youthful soldier.
We had always been as twins, being so nearly the same age, and his
tragic and pathetic passing from life left in my heart a burning scar
which the long years, with their submerging floods of joy and sorrow,
have never wiped out.
This tragedy also left within me a question which time has never
answered: Was it by unguided chance or the immutable decree of an
unknown Fate that I was permitted to live through fifty-two battles--to
survive every kind of danger to which a soldier may be subjected--while
this boy by my side, found swift death in his first battle line? Only
the Great Commander of all life knows the deep secret of this sad
disparity. Speaking from the earthly standpoint from which we judge the
tragedies of this world, I was the favored one, as I stood unscathed
beside the crumpling body of my beloved brother on that far-distant day,
now nearly sixty years gone; but when the light eternal shall unveil
the secrets of this fleeting existence, perchance I shall learn that it
was a stern Fate that, on that eventful morning, left me the long, long
road to travel, while the gentle soul of that boy was borne from the
spot of his patriotic sacrifice, to the rewards that are promised, on
wings far swifter than the bullet which dissolved the functions of his
bodily life.
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