A HERO OF WAR AT COLD HARBOR.
A drummer boy of our regiment who was carrying a musket was wounded and left between the lines. There were many others of our comrades there, too, but somehow to us drummer boys who had beaten the reveille and tattoo together and tramped at the head of the regiment so many long and wearisome marches, the thought that one of our number was lying out there in the blazing June sun suffering not only pain but the terrible agony of thirst, stirred our sympathies to the uttermost and we longed to go to his relief, but dared not for it was like throwing one"s life away to show himself over the breastworks.
It was late in the afternoon that Peter Boyle, "our Pete," suggested a plan by which our comrade was rescued. Pete cut three or four scrub pine trees which abounded there and proposed that he and a couple of others should use them as a screen and go out between the lines.
"Why not wait till dark and go?" someone asked. But then it was feared he could not be found.
The bushes were set over the breastworks one at a time so as not to attract attention and as there were many more growing like them they were probably not noticed. When the evening twilight came on Pete and two others crawled over the breastworks and got behind the trees. Each had a couple of canteens of water for they knew that there would be many to whom a mouthful would be so very acceptable.
The three boys crawled and wriggled themselves toward the rebel lines shielded by the trees. Their movements necessarily had to be very slow so as not to attract the attention of the enemy. The ruse was well planned and executed, but fraught with much danger. They found their comrade and had to lie behind their shelter until darkness concealed their movements, and then the wounded comrade was brought into the lines and his life saved.
A HERO OF PEACE.
Boyle performed a more heroic act at a New York fire in the Bowery a few years ago.
One afternoon a fire broke out in a block, the two upper stories of which were used as a "sweat shop." Boyle was playing the drums in the orchestra of an adjoining theatre. He, with others, ran up on to the roof and saw scores of girls who had been working in the burning building, running frantically around the roof. The flames had cut them off from the lower part of the building and they had gone to the roof, but as the block was higher than all of the adjoining ones except the theatre and that was separated by the s.p.a.ce of several feet, it seemed that they were lost and many flung themselves in despair to the street.
Boyle took in the situation instantly and calling to his aid two men they wrested an iron fire escape from its fastenings on the theatre and with it bridged the s.p.a.ce between the buildings.
Pete then laid a board on top of it and finding that many of the girls dare not cross, he took a rope with him, and went over on the burning building, threw one end back to his helpers and then compelled the girls to walk over the bridge, using the rope as a hand rail. His bravery and nerve saved the lives of very many who but for him would have been lost.
He was the last one to leave the roof of the building and was so badly burned that he had to go to the hospital, and when I met him that day in the park he was just getting around again.
Peter Boyle probably never attended a Sunday school in his life, but I am glad that my faith is of the kind that helps me to believe that when the Book of Life is opened there will be found a balance to his credit.
A COMRADE IN GRAY.
While attending a G. A. R. encampment at Washington not many years ago, a party of us thought we would run over to the sleepy old town of Alexandria one afternoon.
Gra.s.s was growing in the streets and the town had a deserted appearance, all so very different from war times, when thousands of soldiers were in and about the city. Among other places of interest we visited was the little church where Washington used to worship. Sitting on the steps was a dusty, grizzly, crippled man of 60, munching a dry crust of bread. He was dressed in a threadbare suit of gray, and we knew he was a southerner, but as we pa.s.sed into the church he gave us a military salute.
When we came out he was still nibbling away, trying to find the soft side of his bread, and one of our party ventured the remark that "dry bread wasn"t much of a meal."
"That"s so, but when rations are low and the commissary wagons are to the rear, you"ve got to fill up on what you can get. I"ve camped longside of dry bread and water more"n once."
"Going anywhere?"
"Well, I reckon I be if my old legs don"t give out. Got a brother over on the Eastern Sho" of Maryland and I am marching that way."
"Were you in the war?"
"I reckon I was, boys, but on "tother side. Ah, but I can shet my eyes and see jist how Gineral Pickett looked when he led us agin your 2d corps, (he had noticed the red clover leaf pinned on our coats) over at Gettysburg on that 3d of July. Say, Yanks, but "twere bilin" that afternoon. How one of us got back alive is more"n I can tell."
The survivor of the "Lost cause" had by this time forgotten all about his rations. He was living again in the past. Like a tired old war horse at the sound of a bugle, he had risen from the steps and the light of battle flamed in his eye as he continued:
"Yes, boys, I was right there with Pickett--not coolin" coffee back under the wagons, or I wouldn"t hev got two of your bullets in me, nor been jabbed with a bay"net trying to get over the stone wall near that clump of trees. Lord, but I thought I was a goner sure."
We acknowledged it was a hot place.
"Hot! Well I reckon I got "bout as near old satan"s headquarters that day as a live man can. When 37 out of a company of 50 are snuffed out and a half a dozen of the others wounded you may reckon we thought you"uns were going to wipe we "uns out."
He now tossed his crust away with a look of contempt and, grasping his hickory stick with a firm grip, followed us to a nearby restaurant, where we invited him to a good square meal, after which we smoked our cigars while the survivor of Pickett"s charge continued his narrative as he sipped a generous gla.s.s of apple brandy.
We held our breath waiting for the signal guns that were to let us know when the ball was to open.
The regiments fell in just like clockwork, lots of the boys lookin" white round the gills, and not a word was spoken above a whisper except as the commands were given. Attention! Forward! and we went down across those fields, with Pickett leading on horseback and every company dressed as though we were marching in a review.
"Boom! Boom! You"ns let "em all off on us at once. Say, Yanks, the screamin" of the grape and cannister was awful, and they just cut wide swaths in our ranks, but we didn"t quit--did we--until we were all cut to pieces?"
"We were close to your lines when I got a bullet in my leg and as I stooped over to see where I was. .h.i.t my shoulder caught another. That made me fighting mad and I tried to go over the stone wall when one of them Irish brigade fellers chucked his bay"net into me and that laid me out so that I was off duty awhile.
"But dog-goned if I didn"t get back just in time to run up against your old second corps again at Spottsylvania. Kinder seems we couldn"t git away from you"ns. But, comrades, I ain"t got nuthin" agin you.
"Say, that "b.l.o.o.d.y angle," reminded me of Gettysburg. The bullets made basket stuff of the small oaks, and large ones, too."
"And when we charged up against them log breastworks you fellers would jest reach over and jab us with your bay"nets."
"My, but your man Grant was no quitter, was he? We thought we were going to drive you fellers back "cross the Rapidan, as we had done many times before, but Ulysses jist shut his teeth down tighter on his cigar and kept moving by the left flank.
"But our Uncle Robert wasn"t caught napping anywhere, was he? When you tried us at the Pamunky river, Totopotomy, North Anna and Cold Harbor, you found us ready for you every time. Say, old second corps, we got even with you fellers at Cold Harbor for the way you had treated us before. Didn"t we?
"But I"m dog-goned if U. S. G. knew when he was whipped, and, instead of going back and restin" up as the others useter do, and come out in the spring with new uniforms and guns a-shinin", why he jist tried another left flanker on us and brought up at Petersburg, where it was nip and tuck for a long time.
"You could get plenty of men and money and we had got the last of the boys and their grandfathers months before and were busted in everything but grit. We knew the jig was up, but were goin" to die game, and when you rounded us up at Appomattox the last ounce of corn meal wer" gone."
The veteran"s eyes were moist as he expressed thanks for his entertainment and said he must be "marchin" on." We suggested that he would probably find his brother in Maryland, settle down and forget his hardships and battles.
"Forgit nuthin; why I"d rather lose my arms than to forgit how Gen.
Pickett looked that day as 5,000 men behind him marched to death. When you keep step with a man down to the jaws of death and go back alone, if you forgit him ye are not fit to crawl! But, I ain"t anything agin ye, Yanks; "All is quiet on the Potomac" now and if I git in comfortable quarters over in Maryland should like to have you boys come and camp with me a week and eat some of them luscious Eastern Sho" oysters, canvas backs and fat terrapin."
As we shook his hand we pressed a few silver quarters in the palm and when he started away he turned and with a husky voice said:
"Good bye, old second corps; I"m dog-goned if I"ll ever forgit you"ns."
A PRECIOUS COFFEE POT.
Not many years since I spent a night with a comrade in his home in a city of central New York and we sat and smoked and talked, and talked and smoked, until long after midnight. The walls of his den were adorned with guns, sabres, canteens, cartridge boxes and belts and various other war relics. Conspicuously displayed among the other decorations was a battered and blackened coffee pot.
"Yes," he replied in answer to my inquiry, "it is the same old coffee pot I carried from Washington to Appomattox and is one of my most cherished keepsakes."
"About the time we went to the front I was in the city one day and knowing that a coffee pot was a very useful utensil to a soldier I invested in the best copper bottom one that I could find. There was not another one in the company and money could not buy one when we were in the field. Six of us regularly made coffee in it, and others used to take turns in borrowing it for various purposes, such as cooking rice, beans, meat, boiling shirts and the making of those famous old "Liverpool stews" when we were fortunate enough to get an onion, two or three potatoes with hardtack, pepper and salt."
"Many a batch of flap jacks have I stirred up in that old coffee pot, paying the sutler 25 cents a pound for self-rising flour. The ears and handle got melted off after a time, but I punched holes where the ears had been, hooked the bale in and so it lasted to the end. My wife wanted to scour the black off, but I wouldn"t have it.
"Why, it took the smoke of more than a thousand camp fires to put that finish on it!