With the Rank and File

by Thomas J. Ford

The order was repeated. The Colonel answered, "I will, by God, sir;" and called the regiment to attention. We marched to the left of that battery in double-quick time. The size and appearance of the Twenty-fourth Wisconsin swinging into line with ten hundred and twenty-four men and firing a few volleys of musketry at them checked the advancing foe and the battery was saved. I was in the front rank in my company with no coat on and the only red shirt visible in the regiment. The order was given to fall back about twenty paces to the rear. We were too far out near the crest of the hill looking down on the cornfield where the rebels were, but I did not fall back. I was so interested loading and firing at the rebels down in that cornfield that I did not hear the command to cease firing or to fall back. The regiment was ready to fire in its new position, but the command was not given until the red-shirted man fell back into line. The Colonel was calling for me. He sent Adjutant McArthur out in front after me, at the same time calling aloud, "You man with the red shirt, fall back."

I knew that meant me, so I looked around and saw Adjutant McArthur galloping to the front and the regiment was back in the rear. Too quick did I about face and double-quick to my place in the front rank of my company. That night I lay on the ground with nothing between me and the blue sky but my shirt, pants, shoes and cap.

Another incident. Just before the Battle of Stone River I received a box of fine cut chewing and smoking tobacco from an uncle of mine in Milwaukee. We got orders that night to get ready for the march in the morning. I did not know what to do with my big box of tobacco, containing eleven dollars' worth, done up in Milwaukee. A rare thing to get—Milwaukee tobacco. Some of the company boys helped me to do it up in packages from fifty cents' worth to a dollar and a half size packages, and we went around and sold all the tobacco in an hour's time to officers and privates alike, but got very little money, the regiment not being paid yet, so we had to trust until pay day. We got into the fight, however, at daybreak, one gray, frosty morning, after lying on our arms all night, and our fingers were all benumbed with the cold and frost. As for myself, I can say that I had to place my finger on the trigger of the gun with my left hand before I could bring it up to an aim. The rebels came down on us, colors flying and in solid column, shouting and hollering as if certain and sure of victory. We fell back before them. They crowded us into a cedar woods, where there was nothing but cedar trees and rocks, and it seemed as if all the birds and rabbits in that large field were looking for protection around our feet. So thick and fast did the rebels send their shot and shell after us that you might think it impossible for a bird to escape them. The rebels had us surrounded for a while. You could see the rebel officers and orderlies galloping on their horses in the near distance, urging their men on to make a complete capture, but we got out of that battle all right, as history fully explains. When we were in the thickest of this fight an incident took place about that tobacco I sold on time. A comrade of mine, James Mangan, formerly a school teacher in the Town of Franklin (and I was a pupil at his school myself), came near me and said, "Thomas, this is terrible. It seems impossible for any of us to escape being killed by those shells and bullets, if they continue this way much longer." (At the same time I noticed one of the boys that I sold some tobacco to, on time, drop.)

"Yes," said I. "But what will I do now for the price of my tobacco? Most of those are killed that I sold it to, and I will never be paid."

"To the devil with you and your tobacco," said he, "if that is what you are thinking of now, in place of your soul."

We went into that battlefield early in the afternoon, without anything to eat; lay on our arms all night in line of battle in the immediate front of the enemy and fought all the next day without anything to eat or drink. Our supply train was cut off. General Rosecrans had a large pile of forage corn near his headquarters. The boys commenced stealing it for food. There was a strong guard placed around it, and an order issued to give each man one ear of corn as far as it went until supplies would arrive. In dealing out the corn the plan was to put one ear of corn into each empty hand as it reached out. Some got two ears of corn by placing the first behind their back and thrusting forth the other empty hand. The pile of corn did not supply one-hundredth part of the vast numbers clustered around it. We ate the ear of corn, and that was all we had to eat at that time.

Closing this incident of the Battle of Stone River, I might as well remark right here that my father and his three sons were in the War of the Rebellion from 1861-1865, and the first he knew of two of his sons being in the war and in the Twenty-fourth Wisconsin was after the Battle of Stone River. He took part in the same battle with Captain Bridges' battery. Father came to see Col. Larrabee of the Twenty-fourth Wisconsin with a view of getting his two sons, Daniel and Thomas, transferred to Bridges' battery, so that we could be together with him. He told the Colonel about it, and the Colonel said he would not allow it to be done; they were two good boys and he was going to keep them.

"But they are my boys," said the old man, "and I want them with me."

"They are not your boys, by God, sir," said the Colonel; "they are my boys, and I am going to keep them; you cannot have them."