Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 9, 2025
The bugles were sounding the "assembly" every where, and the men, slapping and scratching as if they would tear their flesh and their clothes off, were hastily swallowing their last mouthfuls of hot coffee and bread and pork, snatching up their guns and blankets and falling in. "Shelbyville is only six miles away," said the Orderly-Sergeant as he lined up Co.
Everybody seemed sobered by the nearness of the terrible battle. Nobody laughed, nobody swore, nobody joked, nobody played the usual light-hearted reveille tricks. The Orderly-Sergeant did not call the roll with his usual glibness and rasp. He seemed to linger a little over each name, as if thinking whether it would be answered to again, or he be there to call it.
"The orders are," the Orderly-Sergeant explained to Si, as they were cooking supper, "that we're to move out tomorrow morning in light marching order, three days' rations, 80 rounds of cartridges, only blankets, no tents, but one wagon to a regiment, and one mule to a company to carry ammunition and rations. O, we're stripped down to the skin for a fight, I tell you.
"The rebel calvary's jumped a herd of beef cattle out at pasture, run off the guard, and are trying to get away with them," the Orderly-Sergeant hurriedly explained as he lined up Co. Q. "We're to make a short cut across the country and try to cut them off. Sir, the company's formed." "Attention, Co. Q!" shouted Capt. McGillicuddy. "Right face! Forward, file left! March!"
"Much paper you'll find in this regiment after that rain," said Shorty contemptuously, as he knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and started to fall in for roll-call. "Every mite of paper anybody has was soaked to spitwads. But mebbe the Orderly might have a sheet." After roll-call Si went to the Orderly-Sergeant.
"He had relieved me at 10 a.m. He might have been up over an hour when it happened. The orderly-sergeant had got his mouth at the speaking-tube, in the act of sending down a message; he did not see him hit. It was a shell from their Maxim-Nordenfelt. And when we got to him, the first glance told us there was little hope." "There is none at all," says Saxham curtly, as is his wont.
O, but I'll soak 'em for that yet." "Trouble is," said Si, laughing, "the boys've bin layin' around doin' nothin' too long. They're fuller o' devilment than a dog is of fleas." "But I haint told you half," continued the Orderly-Sergeant.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking