With the Rank and File

by Thomas J. Ford

The General scratched his head and said, "Out-generaled by my own men. That is the last damned 'order' I will ever issue in this camp."

Col. Larrabee was a good man, but he seemed to get tired of the war after a certain time when he did not receive a brigadier-generalship, which he was entitled to by seniority. We were taking a rest one day under the shade of some trees waiting for orders, lying down full length, taking the best advantage of the precious moments given us, when the Colonel raised himself up to a sitting position and said, "Boys, I brought the Twenty-fourth Wisconsin Regiment into the field ten hundred and twenty-four men strong. Now I have but three hundred and sixty men, a regiment that I can take anywhere and feel proud of them; a regiment that every man of them knows as much if not more than I do myself."

The orders came to fall in, and right here the curtain drops on Col. Larrabee. I have never heard of or seen him since. It is true that a great many different men had their turn in commanding the Twenty-fourth Wisconsin Regiment, and it is also true that they were all good men, viz., West, Kennedy, Bombach, Parsons, and last of all that young and brave boy, Col. McArthur, whose gallantry at the Battle of Franklin I shall never forget. The rebels had driven our men out of the breastworks that we were relieved from about an hour or so before in order to cook some refreshments, for we were on advance guard duty about 48 hours and were bothered so much with rebel cavalry that we did not have much time to rest or eat. Marching into Franklin we were closely followed up, in the rear of our army, by rebel General Hood's infantry. We stacked arms, after being "relieved," a quarter of a mile, I should think, from those breastworks. Our coffee was just beginning to boil and our sow-belly and crackers frying, when the rebels charged those breastworks and drove our men out, and followed them up. They came through our stacked arms and over our fires, upsetting our coffee pots and frying pans, with the rebels right at their heels and at our stacked arms as soon as we were. Every one of us was as mad as he could be after losing his nearly cooked dinner, and we felt as if we could whip the whole rebel army just at that moment, when Col. McArthur called out, "Fall in, Twenty-fourth; take arms. Charge. Give um hell, boys. Give um hell, give um hell, Twenty-fourth." We did "give um hell," and drove them back over the breastworks again. When he got the run on them we commenced shooting as they were jumping back again over the breastworks, and they'd holler out, "Don't shoot, Yanks. For God Almighty's sake, don't shoot." Then some of them would get hit and cry out, "Oh."

We got the breastworks and held them against several attempts to take them from us, until darkness came and everything was still. About 2 o'clock in the morning, under cover of darkness, after the supply train and everything was across the river, we stole away out of those breastworks without making any noise, crossed the river, burned the bridge and were safe on our journey to Nashville, where ended the last of our battle of the war.

Right here I will mention a little incident that happened at one of the rebel attempts to take those breastworks from us at the Battle of Franklin. Capt. Fillbrooks, of Company D, a very brave man, noticed one of his men dodging or ducking his head from the noise of the rebel bullets. "Mike," said the Captain, "quit dodging your head there. Stand up to it and take it like a man." The word was no sooner out of the Captain's mouth when a bullet hit him in the middle of the forehead and laid him out dead. Mike said to him. "Why the devil in hell don't you stand up and take it like a man." And the word wasn't out of Mike's mouth when he got a scalp wound on the right side of his forehead. "Holy Moses," said he, "there is nothing like the dodging after all. Every time I heard it before I dodged it and it never hit me."

The day before the Franklin battle we got into a brush with the rebel cavalry at a place called Spring Hill. The sun was settling down in the west. They had been picking at us all day, so they prepared for a charge. We could see the sun glisten on their swords as they drew sabers. They were on the east of us and charged across that plain with a seeming determination to play great havoc in our ranks. But the old First Brigade let them come near enough to give them one volley of musketry and then came to a charge against cavalry, the front-rank men standing firmly placed in proper position all with fixed bayonets. Here they come hollering like demons, carbines empty, sabers drawn over their heads ready to come down with a cut and slash, but they couldn't do it. Every man stood firm. The Twenty-fourth was in the front of the brigade, facing the enemy. They tried to force their horses to open a gap, but it was impregnable. They withdrew in disorder. We lay down and our batteries played havoc with those rebel cavalry. You could see a rebel's head falling off his horse on one side and his body on the other, and the horse running and nickering and looking for its rider. Others you could see fall off with their foot caught in the stirrup and the horse dragging and trampling them, dead or alive. Others, the horse would get shot and the rider tumble head over heels, or may be get caught by his horse falling on them. I used to think before that cavalry charge what a terrible thing it would be to get into a battle with cavalry and imagine how they could cut and slash and shoot at us and trample us down with their horses; but I thought different after that experience with the rebel cavalry. Why, it is the greatest fun imaginable in time of war for a solid column of infantry prepared for the attack to have a cavalry charge on them. The horses won't do it for the rider, and the rider can do nothing with a body of solid infantry.

There was a little incident that happened before the Battle of Chickamauga in a place we called the Devil's Basin, in Georgia. We had fifty rebel officers and soldiers as prisoners. There was one rebel captain who was continually cursing and abusing Abe Lincoln and the Stars and Stripes. I was sergeant of the guard in charge of the prisoners. The officer of the day gave me orders to have that kind of language stopped if I had to do it with the point of the bayonet. I put a new guard on, a man that I knew would stop it. After a while this rebel captain thought he would make the acquaintance of the new guard, and asked him what countryman he was. The guard replied with great emphasis, "My father is an Irishman, and my mother is a Dutch woman; the damnedist breed that ever lived; and if you don't keep your mouth shut I'll run this bayonet right through you," at the same time going right for the rebel captain. The next day we let the rebel officers go and withdrew from the Devil's Basin towards Chickamauga. Our line was too long and weak, a great mistake of General Rosecrans. We were double-quicked into the Battle of Chickamauga on the morning of September 20, 1863, and filled a gap that was wide open right in front of a large body of rebel soldiers that was lying on the ground waiting for orders to go, as it appeared to me, when General Little, our brave Brigadier-General, led us up within plain sight of them. General Little was wounded slightly in the arm. The rebels peppered it into us, as our brave Henry G. Rogers can tell you. Little moved his line back, which I think was wrong, for it encouraged the rebels and they came right for us. Just when the new line was formed General Sheridan rode by in a gallop down the right of the line. In passing the Twenty-fourth Wisconsin he said a word to General Little and went on. A limb of a tree brushed off his hat, but he did not stop. One of his orderlies dismounted and made several attempts before he replaced the hat on Sheridan's head, Sheridan paying no attention whatever to the hat business, as it appeared to me. The rebs came for us in our new line. The firing commenced. Our brigade, General Little, was right behind our colors. I was between him and the colors. Oh, how the boys did load and fire. I saw rebels crawling on their hands and knees through the underbrush to get the Twenty-fourth Wisconsin flag. They never got the flag, neither did they ever go back. A man in my company was firing high. I drew his attention to the fact, and ordered him to aim low.

"Sergeant," said he, "I have a son in the rebel army, and I imagine he is forninst me out and I don't want to shoot him."