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Updated: June 24, 2025
No. 2 Platoon had two casualties for the night a corporal who had paused too long in looking over the parapet while a star-shell flared, and 'caught it' neatly through the forehead, and a private who, in the act of firing through a loop-hole, had been hit by a bullet which glanced off his rifle barrel and completed its resulting ricochet in the private's eyes and head.
I could see through the chaplain in a minute. He had thought I would jump at the chance to put on style, and that he could make ten or fifteen dollars selling me a gilt-edged saber. I thanked him warmly, and a little sarcastically, for his great interest in the welfare of my soul, in sickness and in health, but told him that I was going to try and pull through with a common private's saber.
There, on top of a pile of letters, with "Herr Horace Green" scribbled in German script on a piece of paper pinned to the green-gray service covering, lay my dented, battered, and long-lost German private's helmet!
He was in private's uniform, but carried no arms, and for head covering, instead of the hat worn by the Ninth, had an infantry cap perched jauntily on his curly black hair. But his face was clear, and his cheeks rosy, and he sat straight as an arrow in the saddle. I drew back my horse and ranged up beside him, inspired by curiosity. The eyes turned toward me undoubtedly betrayed negro blood.
Rosecrans's eccentricities and vagrant fancies was one for prowling around through his camps at night, wearing a private's overcoat and cap. One night he strolled into the camp of the 200th Ind. The superior architecture of Si and Shorty's cabin struck him, and he decided to look inside. He knocked on the door. "Come in," shouted Si.
He had a heartache every time a letter came from Leon, for he knew it held a request for money, and a private's pay, which at best is small, is frequently nothing in a Spanish regiment. Young Miguel had been on service in Havana for a couple of years, and his parents had been growing steadily poorer. He could hardly buy cigarettes.
Not a word was intelligible to the little, bandy-legged fellow, whose supports had become curved from much riding on an elephant's neck; but there was no mistaking the private's action as he took out the roll of tobacco, opened one end so as to expose the finely shredded aromatic herb, held it to his nose, and then passed it on to the mahout, whose big, dull, brown eyes began to glisten, and he hesitated as if in doubt, till the private pressed it into his hands and made a sign as if of filling a pipe and puffing out the smoke.
Knowing who she was, he comprehended instantly the social gulf stretching unbridged between them. An educated man himself, with family connections he had long ago ceased to discuss, he realized his present position more keenly than he otherwise might. He had enlisted in the army with no misunderstanding as to what a private's uniform meant.
This had the desired effect one which sent a strange feeling of relief through the young private's breast for the wondering, questioning eyes he now met looked bright and intelligent, making him bend lower till he could speak loudly in the boy's ear the simple question, "How are you?"
Reeling up to the nearest soldier, the panic-crazed corporal snatched the private's rifle and fired three times, blindly, at Bruce. Then, foaming at the mouth, Freund fell heavily to earth again, chattering and twitching in a fit. Bruce, at the second shot, leaped high in the air, and collapsed, in an inert furry heap, among the bushes. There he lay, his career as a courier-dog forever ended.
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