A CLOSE SHAVE.
The battle of Resaca began May 14, '64. Walker's division, to which we belonged, was held in reserve during the morning and at 12 p. m., as the fighting grew fiercer, we were ordered up to reinforce Stewart's division in our front. A pontoon bridge had been laid across the Oostenaula river and a courier stationed on its bank to hurry the men across, as the railroad embankment on the other side would protect them from the fire of a Federal battery, which had secured the exact range of the road over which we were passing. As we approached the bridge Capt. Martin, commanding the company next in our front, halted the column a moment to hear what the courier was saying. As the march was resumed, a solid shot from the battery struck directly in a file of fours in Martin's company killing two and wounding a third, not more than ten feet from where I stood. The time occupied in the halt would have about sufficed to have covered the intervening distance, and certainly saved the lives of some of the Oglethorpes and possibly my own. Crossing the river, Gen. W. H. T. Walker passed us going to the front and as he rode by, another shot from the battery struck immediately behind him, barely missing his horse. Glancing around at the dust it had raised and turning to us with a smile on his face, he said, "Go it boots," and galloped on to the head of the division. On this, as well as on every other occasion when under fire, he seemed not only absolutely indifferent to danger, but really to enjoy its presence. Gen. Cabell, in recalling his association with Gen. Walker in the '60's, said that battle always brought to his eyes an unusual glitter and that he thought him the bravest man he had ever known.
A hero in three wars, severely wounded at Okeechobee, Fla., and at Molino Del Rey and Chapultpec, Mex., he fell at last gallantly leading his division at the battle of Atlanta, July 22, '64, and I am sure no battle soil on God's green earth in all the ages was ever stained by braver or by nobler blood than William Henry Walker's.