A True War Story.
By David W. Stafford.
Now in the commencement of this narrative and tale of my early life, I must say that a good part of my life has been somewhat gloomy. At the time of my entering the service of my country I was seventeen years of age. It was just after the first and second engagements at Bull Run.
My father was a poor man, the father of some nine children, and a shoemaker by trade. I had left home early in my youth, when about fourteen or fifteen years old, and at this time, just before the war, a boy’s chances for labor and wages paid were very small. I worked for only seven dollars a month. This was the first labor I ever performed, working by the month. Oh, how my mind goes back to childhood days!
Now in the fall of 1862, on the 28th day of August I felt it my duty to respond to my country’s call, and I enlisted in the 83rd Pennsylvania Volunteers, to serve three years.
After I had been some two years in the service, my brother, two years younger than myself, enlisted and came to the army at Rappahannock Station, on the Rappahannock River. Now I had written a good many letters home to my poor brother, advising him not to come to the army, but it was of no avail. He would and did come, but I have reason to thank God that it was his own good will, and that my brother’s life blood was not shed in vain for his country, although I did try my best to have him stay at home.
Soon after he came to the regiment and was placed in the same company with me, I was detailed to go on picket duty. Very shortly thereafter I became injured while assisting in the building of rifle pits at night and was sent from our headquarters to Washington. I had previous to this been through all of the engagements from the Antietam war, where we first found the regiment. I had participated in all of the engagements, such as the first and second Fredericksburg battles and the Chancellorsville battle, or “Stick in the Mud,” and the Culpepper battle and Mine Run, and at this place it certainly did seem as though we run, for we retreated clear beyond Manassas Junction, in the direction of Washington, and we could not stop long enough to steep our coffee without getting shelled from the rebel batteries. For six miles, on what was called the stone pike, we double marched, and it did seem as though the rebels were destined to lick us every time we met them. I had, up to the time of my brother’s coming into the army, participated in all of the engagements that our regiment had been called into.
There is one thing that I recall to memory very distinctly. It is the incident of our camping on the battle field of Bull Run, on our retreat from Mine Run, near the Rapidan River. Near this run the rebels had very strong fortifications thrown up. Now on the battle field of Bull Run our dead had just been covered—a great many by the enemy—on top of the ground, and so shallow that the bones of thousands of the dead, skulls and all others, lay on top of the ground. Oh, how sad it did seem to wake in the morning to find the country strewn with human bones for miles around, and it is one thing that I can’t forget very soon.