Southern Soldier Stories

by George Cary Eggleston

Slowly, and with cadenced step, the procession moved around inside the square. And as it passed me, I was curious to observe the condemned man’s behavior. His step was as steady and as firm as that of any man in the guard. I looked at his hands to see if there were any convulsive clutching of the fingers. There was none. I doubt if any man in all that regiment felt so calm in mind or so well poised in nerve as Youngblood looked.

Having completed the seemingly endless march around the three closed sides of the square, the procession turned to the right, and crossed its open end to the point of execution.

There an officer stepped forward and read to Youngblood the findings and sentence of the court which had condemned him, with the formal endorsements approving them and ordering the sentence executed. The guard which had the prisoner in charge divided to the right and left, and Youngblood was left standing alone in front of his coffin, and beside his open grave.

At the word of command he knelt upon the coffin and folded his arms across his chest. Again at the word of command twelve soldiers stepped out in front of him with guns in their hands. Six of these guns carried ball cartridges, and six were blank. No man in the firing squad was permitted to know whether his gun had a bullet in it or not.

The officer in command spoke scarcely above his breath, but so hushed was the time that his words were audible to the three thousand men there assembled, as he said to each alternate man: “Fire at his head,” and to the intervening man: “Fire at his chest.” Then turning his back, which was perhaps not an officer-like thing to do, the lieutenant gave in a husky voice the word of command.

“Ready, aim, fire.”

There was a sharp crack from twelve rifles fired simultaneously. There was a whirr and whistle of six bullets that had passed through the head or chest of the doomed man, and hurtled off into the fields beyond. Army rifles fire with tremendous force.

The dead man’s body rose to its feet and fell limply forward.

Five minutes later all that was left of Youngblood was buried beneath six feet of earth.

There was no merriment in any of the camps that day, or the next, or the next. Even our scant rations were not much relished by those of us who had witnessed this scene.