"My God, captain," whined the man, "they will kill me, if I stay there."
"But if you are sick you need treatment."
"I cannot enter that place again."
"You prefer to perform your duties as a good soldier, then?"
"I will do anything rather than go there."
He was directed to go about his business and, soon thereafter, I inquired about the case. Dr. Spaulding said: "I discovered there was nothing the matter with the man, only that he was playing off, and when he described his alleged symptoms, I began a course of heroic treatment. He was purged, cupped, blistered, given emetics, until life really became a burden and he ran away from the "treatment."
This man never went to the regimental hospital again, but he made no end of trouble. He was a chronic shirk. He would not work, and there were not men enough in the regiment to get him into a fight. Soon after the campaign of 1863 opened in Virginia he was missing, and the next thing heard from him was that he had been discharged from some hospital for disability. He never smelt powder, and years after the war, he was to all appearance an able-bodied man. I believe the Sixth was the third regiment which he had gone into in the same way. When he enlisted, the surgeon who examined him pronounced him a sound man, and it was a mystery how he could be physically sound or physically unsound, at will, and so as to deceive the medical examiners in either event. He died long ago and his widow drew a pension after his death as he did before it, but he never did a day's honest military duty in his life. Peace to his ashes! He may be playing some useful part in the other world, for all that I know. At all events, I am glad that his widow gets a pension, though as a soldier he was never deserving of anything but contempt, for he would desert his comrades when they needed aid and never exposed his precious carcass to danger for his country or for a friend.
That is not an attractive picture which I have drawn. I will paint another, the more pleasing by reason of the contrast which the two present.
One day a party of sixteen men came into camp and applied for enlistment. A condition of the contract under which they were secured for my troop was that one of their number be appointed sergeant. They were to name the man and the choice, made by ballot, fell upon Marvin E. Avery. At first blush, he was not a promising candidate for a non-commissioned office. Somewhat ungainly in figure, awkward in manners, and immature in mind and body, he appeared to be; while he seemed neither ambitious to excel nor quick to learn. He certainly did not evince a craving for preferment. In the end it was found that these were surface indications, and that there were inherent in him a strength of character and a robust manliness that only awaited the opportunity to assert themselves.
He was appointed sergeant but, at first, manifested so little aptitude for the work, that it was feared he would never become proficient in his duties, or acquire a sufficient familiarity with tactics to drill a squad. No one could have been more willing, obedient, or anxious to learn. He was a plodder who worked his way along by sheer force of will and innate self-reliance, and governed in all that he did by a high sense of duty. He never attained first rank as a sergeant while in camp, but in the field, he sprang to the front like a thoroughbred. From the moment when he first scented battle, he was the most valuable man in the troop, from the captain down. In this, I am sure, there is no disparagement of the scores of fearless soldiers who followed the guidon of that troop from Gettysburg to Appomattox.