I, being Joe’s immediate chief, as well as his elder brother, commanded him to silence and ordered him back to his gun. There he stood for fifteen minutes astride a dead man and pulling the lanyard himself. At the end of that time we were ordered to retire to Pocotaligo.
Joe was flushed, powder grimed, and very angry; so angry that even I came in for a part of his displeasure. When I asked him, in order that I might make report for the section, how many shots he had fired, he blazed out at me: “How do I know? I’ve been killing Yankees, not counting shots.”
“How many rounds have you left in your limber-chest, Joe?” I asked.
He turned up the lid of the chest, and replied: “Five.”
“And the chest had fifty, hadn’t it, when you went into action?”
“Of course.”
“Then you fired forty-five, didn’t you?”
“Oh, I suppose so, I don’t know! Confound these technicalities, anyhow! I’m fighting, not counting! Do your own arithmetic!”
It wasn’t a very subordinate speech for a sergeant to make to the commander of his section, but Joe was my brother, and I loved him.
At Pocotaligo he fought his gun with superb devotion and effect. But he remained mad all over and clear through till two o’clock that night. At that hour I was able to persuade him that he had been indiscreet in his remarks to the Chief of Artillery.