“Is that all you wish to say?” asked Pollard, when he had read the report.
“Quite all.”
“You make no mention of your own wound.”
“That was received later. It has no proper place in this report.”
“True. That is for me to mention in my report for the day.”
But in his indorsement upon the sergeant-major’s report Pollard wrote:—
I cannot too highly commend to the attention of the military authorities the extraordinary courage, devotion, and soldierly skill manifested by Sergeant-major Kilgariff, both in this affair and in the fighting of the last few days in the Wilderness.
In the meantime General Ewell had mentioned in one of his reports the way in which Kilgariff had done his work in the Wilderness, and now General Anderson wrote almost enthusiastically in commendation of this young man’s brilliant and daring action, so that when the several reports reached General Lee’s headquarters, the great commander was deeply impressed. Here was a young enlisted man whose conduct in action had been so conspicuously gallant and capable as to attract favourable mention from two corps commanders within a brief period of three or four days. General Lee officially recommended that a captain’s commission should be issued at once to a man so deserving of promotion and so fit to command.
The document did not reach Kilgariff until a fortnight later, after Arthur Brent had sent him to Wyanoke for treatment and careful nursing. Kilgariff took the commission in his enfeebled hands and carefully read it through, seeming to find some species of pleasure in perusing the formal words with which he was already familiar. Across the sheet was written in red ink:—