We will mark that officer

After lunch I noticed several large, rough-edged wooden crates being lined up on the ground across the road from the garden. The crates were roughly two feet wide and six feet long. I recognized immediately what they were for.

          “No tellin’ how soon I’ll be put in one of those,” a young sergeant joked as he walked by.

          “I will consider myself very lucky if I even get one,” said another soldier.

          “Lucky?” I asked as I handed him a tin cup filled with water. “Why would you be lucky to get a coffin?”

          “Because it means they at least found my body, miss.” He finished his water with a loud gulp. “Some boys out there are blown to bits so bad, there ain’t nothin’ left when the guns are done with ‘em. They simply disappear.”

    

      Nothing left? That was a terrifying thought.

          “Get up, you damn coward!”

          I was jarred from the frightful thoughts of battle when I heard the voice of a Union officer down the road. He was yelling at one of the young soldiers. The soldier had been marching along with the rest of his regiment heading towards the front when apparently he had lost his nerve. The sounds of guns booming in the distance and the sights of the bloodied and wounded being transported past him must have been too much for him to handle. He was crawling along the side of the road on his hands and knees. Tears were streaming down his face.

          “Get up and march, you worthless coward!” the officer yelled again.

          “I . . . I can’t, sir,” said the quivering soldier. “My legs w-won’t move.”  My heart ached for him. He looked like a homesick teenager.      

         By that time Tillie had run up beside me to see what was happening. “Oh, that poor boy,” she said.

         We watched as the officer kicked the soldier in the ribs knocking him flat into the dirt. “Get up now, or I will beat you to death!” yelled the officer. He kicked the soldier again. He grabbed a rifle from another passing infantryman and used the butt of the gun to hit the poor soldier three or four time on his shoulders and the back of his head. The soldier appeared to be unconscious so the officer simply left him where he lay.

          A couple of the other men ran over and picked him up and carried him up to the house. It would be several hours until the young man revived. In addition to the blows on the back of his head he had also been suffering from sunstroke received during the long march.

          “We will mark that officer for this,” said one of the soldiers who had brought the injured man inside.

          “What do you mean?” asked Tillie.

          “It means that in the midst of battle, that officer will have more guns than those of the enemy to worry about,” said the soldier. I was later told that some of the most cruel and inhuman officers fell in battle that way, from being shot “accidentally” by their own side.

--from Time Trip #4: Killing for Country 

TIME TRIP ADVENTURE 4

KILLING FOR COUNTRY  

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TIME TRIP ADVENTURE 1

THE JOURNEY TO ANCIENT GREECE 

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TIME TRIP ADVENTURE 2

A RIDE ON THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD

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TIME TRIP ADVENTURE 3

WITNESS TO THE FIRST THANKSGIVING 

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