We slept under one blanket; we shared our rations and our confidences; and if we did not fight side by side, that was in part because he was corporal at the right of the first platoon and my place was at the other end of the line, but also in part because he had a way of doing such startlingly original things in the face of danger.
His image rises before me now. There he stands, tall, erect, balanced on one foot while he nervously taps the ground with the other and looks at me with that mocking expression all his own, that premonitory grin provoked by some latent jest upon my moralising.
This bantering trick, so common with him, breaking out as it often did at most unexpected and often atrociously inappropriate moments, was an index of the side of his character most open to the general eye. Joe was but eighteen years old when he enlisted, just the age when the boy is passing into the man; a good six feet in stature, without an ounce of spare flesh, long armed, loose-jointed, at once too undeveloped and too full of individuality to wear any conventional garb with ease, so that Uncle Sam's shop-made and ill-fitting uniform hung upon his youthful but powerful frame with anything but martial impressiveness. This, however, troubled him little. An undue care for appearance was never one of his foibles, and the pomp and circumstance of war always smote his keen Yankee sense of the ludicrous. Yet he had withal the manner and the heart of a gentleman, and if you looked into those merry yet piercing eyes, or listened for five minutes to the original ideas expressed by that well modulated and pleasant voice with just a suspicion of "away-down-East" accent in it, you would be compelled to feel that in this boy there was the making of no common man.
For a long time Joe was a puzzle to his comrades. They could not understand why such a great boy, and one too, so unmilitary in his ways, should be a corporal. Some of the older men resented it. And then, his persistent practical joking, his careless independence and smiling indifference to rebuke or criticism was perplexing, not to say exasperating. Yet no one could positively dislike him. He might be provoking at times, yet every one knew him incapable of anything mean, and his untiring good-nature and open-handed generosity made warm friends for him from the very start.
The captain certainly showed himself a good judge of men when he made Joe a corporal, though it took time to justify the choice, and the honours of office sat but lightly upon the recipient. Not until our days of battle came did Joe show any care for military distinction, and he never bothered himself about the promotion which others sought so eagerly.
As everybody knows, the corporal's rank is lowest in the company, only a step above the position of a private, and the distinguishing badge is that of the "chevrons," two triangular stripes on the sleeves of the coat. So little did Corporal Joe prize his office that he would not at first wear these; but the time speedily came when he found them desirable. We were hurried into the field, and when at Hagerstown in Maryland we joined the brigade to which we were assigned, we found ourselves in a strictly guarded camp. The men were allowed to pass the gates only in squads in charge of a non-commissioned officer. And now Joe, seeing that the chevrons might be useful, instead of applying to the commissary for a regulation set, cut strips of light blue from the skirt of his overcoat and rudely sewed them on the sleeve of one arm only. Then he proceeded to the gate and attempted to pass the guard, who of course stopped him.
"You have no non-commissioned officer with you. Only a squad in charge of a serjeant or corporal can pass."
Joe held out the newly adorned arm, exclaiming, "Is not that corporal enough for you?"
The guard, a member of a veteran regiment, was perplexed yet obdurate.
"Yes, you may be a corporal, but where is your squad?"