ROLL CALL AFTER BATTLE.
Few scenes in a soldier's life are touched with sadder interest than the first roll call after a battle. As Orderly sergeant of the Oglethorpes I had to call its roll, perhaps a thousand times, and yet I do not now remember one that touched my heart more deeply than that which closed that summer day at Kennesaw. The voices of twenty-two of those who had so promptly answered to the call of duty a few short hours before, were hushed and silent when their names were called. Some with Federal bayonets guarding them, were tramping to prison dens, perhaps to slow and lingering death. Some with mangled form and limb were suffering more than death, while some with white cold faces turned toward the stars, were answering roll call on the other shore. Standing beside the breastworks on that summer evening, under the shadow of grim and silent Kennesaw, with twilight deepening into night, there were shadows on all our hearts as well, shadows that stretched beyond us and fell on hearts and hearthstones far away, shadows that rest there still and never will be lifted.
UNDER TWO FLAGS.
Some time in '63 there came to the regiment a young and beardless boy, "the only son of his mother and she was a widow." Timid and shrinking, he was assigned to a company in which he had neither friend nor acquaintance, and he soon grew homesick and despondent. He had been my brother's schoolboy friend and in pity for his loneliness I made an effort to secure his transfer to the Oglethorpe's. His captain declined to approve the papers and the effort failed. Frail and unfitted to endure the hardships of a soldier's life, he nevertheless bore up bravely under the constant toil and danger of the Dalton and Atlanta campaign until the battle of Kennesaw was fought. His company was on the skirmish line that day and suffered heavily. When the Federal line had been repulsed and in the hush of the twilight air the roll was called, he was reported "missing," a word that carried with it to many a lonely home a world of agony in those war days.
Two hours later a member of his company came to me and said, "Dick is lying dead between the picket lines. If I can get two others, will you go with us to find the body and bring it in?" Prowling around at night between two hostile skirmish lines in constant expectation of being shot by either side was not a pleasant duty, but I thought of his widowed mother and, and told him I would go. He went away to secure other help, but learned in some way that he had been mistaken; that the dead soldier lying cold out under the starlight was not Dick, but another member of the regiment. A few days later we abandoned the Kennesaw line and I heard no more of my boy friend until the war had ended. Then I learned through returning prisoners that he had been captured at Kennesaw; that under the bitter cruelties of prison life he had grown sick and helpless and was slowly dying; that in his weakness and under the inhuman policy of Grant and Lincoln, hopeless of release by exchange, he was offered a chance of renewed life if he would consent to serve against the Indians, who were giving trouble in the far West. Lee's shadowy line was growing thinner day by day. Hood's reckless raid on Nashville had ended in disaster and the end had nearly come. With the shadow of the grave resting on every prison wall and more, perhaps, from love of mother than of life, he yielded. But the seeds of death were sown too deeply in his boyish frame. The prison horrors, that merit, but find no place on Lincoln's monument, nor Grant's mausoleum, had done their work. A few short months and somewhere under the Western sky, far from home and kindred, the prairie grass was weaving in the summer sunshine, its creeping tendrils over his lonely grave.
Poor, gentle-hearted Dick! Deaths were common, sadly common in those old days but the memory of his fate has never been recalled in all these years without a sense of sadness and of sorrow. My heart has never judged him save in pity and in kindness always, for I am sure few mounds of earth have lain above a purer or a gentler heart.
AN UN-DRESS PARADE.
In active service, brass bands and "dress parades" fell largely into "innocuous desuetude." When a band was seen going to the rear it was considered prima facie evidence that there was a fight on hand, while an order for dress parade dispelled any apprehension of an early engagement. I recall one instance, however, of an undress parade on the firing line and without a brass band accompaniment.
In the early days of July, '64, the Northern and Southern banks of the Chattahoochee formed for a time the skirmish lines of Johnston's and Sherman's armies. One day some of our pickets established with their opponents on the other side a self-appointed truce. No firing was to be done during its existence, and proper notice was to be given of its termination. The weather was warm and a squad of Yankee pickets relying upon the honor of their Southern foes, decided to take a swim in the river. Stripping themselves to the bathing suit furnished by nature, they plunged in and were enjoying the bath immensely. The Confederate officer of the day becoming apprised of the temporary cessation of hostilities, sent a courier down with orders to stop the truce and renew the firing at once. The bathers were in plain view and in easy range of our rifle pits. Notice was given them of the orders and they begged to be allowed time to dress and resume their positions in their own pits. The courtesy was accorded, but their toilets were not made in either slow or common time. There was a hasty run on the bank, a hurried leap into the pits and then the crack of the rifles announced the end of the truce and of the undress parade as well.