In less than half an hour he was in the midst of it, and all day long, as the battle ebbed and flowed, and the air was turned to powder and smoke, and shells tore through the woods, and the roar of musketry grew so dense that it drowned the thunder of the cannon, his courage and enthusiasm were conspicuously illustrated. At dusk our division was relieved, and he marched his company to the field assigned for our bivouac. Over fifty per cent. of his men had been killed or wounded, but he was unhurt.
An hour later, after the command had cooked and eaten a scanty meal, the first since morning, he came to me and asked permission to take a small squad of his company and go out to the front. “I think,” he said, “that I may be able to find some of my boys who are wounded.” I gave the requested permission, but warned him not to venture too far, calling his attention to the constant firing of the picket lines. A bright smile lit up his face as he said: “Oh, I’ll be careful. But that rattle is feeble after the roar of to-day.” And giving his usual quick, graceful military salute, he wheeled and walked away out of the light of the camp-fire into the darkness.
I never saw him again. An hour later the men he had taken with him returned, and reported that they had run into a squad of the enemy; that the Captain had been shot through the heart and instantly killed; and that they were unable to bring in his body.
Thus ended the young life of Edgar P. Trego, “a soldier without fear and without reproach.” From the dull level of every-day walks and ways he stepped at once into the great events of a great era, and became a hero and a martyr for a great cause. One of the counties of this State bears his name, and is honored by it. His remains, recovered months after his death, repose in the beautiful National Cemetery at Chattanooga, with those of nearly twenty thousand other soldiers who gave up their lives that the country might live.
“Brave, good, and true,
I see him stand before me now,
And read again on that young brow,
Where every hope was new,
How sweet were life! Yet, by the mouth firm-set
And look made up for Duty’s utmost debt,