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Show f & m OLD SOLDER . Of fOKTWES & E ', CGPYRiOHT BY VtSTERN NEWSPAPER UNION MiP' " Tl3 f i :- "r "iiitv 'rV'.'7' - ;f: -r- .r. r-. .-. fj . . i f ' m& v m : I ? ' "8 i - ' ' '" - S I' h ' " I I ! v ! i'Hi'i 1 . v,' i THE LITTLE BUGLER AS S3 0s 5. V W ? ilw HE LOOKED ( ( V f VX jO'A V Pilliam F.Johnston went toaT2 Vv the age of eleven years and " came a plains fighter afterward. His 7 .rCvVVI reflections, here set down, point a ho tv I onJ o4vr uL w u V lie down to sleep, stretched in long lines of any nnrS mOrai anU aUOm a laie T T r ifiri number of men, all curled up spoon fashion, as lnl j (I III close together as possible. This "human document" is published as one ot the most remarkable letters we ever read. It was not intended for publication originally, but was written by Mr. Johnston, who lives in the Michigan Michi-gan Soldiers' Home, to his brother, an editor in Nebraska. ( Y DEAR Brother George: MYour letter of November 27 is at hand, and it warms my old heart to think my little brother is so inter-UsKV? inter-UsKV? ested in anything pertaining to my i-yJk rather uneventful past. Of all things l (jrs I despise, 'tis an egotist. However, as (s&jrjGf- you wish to know something about 4 your brother Billy's early experience, I don't see how I can help telling. I was born June 18, 1850, in Detroit, Mich., and when the Civil war broke out in 1861, I was going to school, with no thought of anything but a good time and mischief. In July, 1861, when one month past eleven years of age, I offered my services in the Ninth Michigan infantry, Company "H," Captain Cap-tain Adams In command, which was quartered at Fort Wayne. Of course, I ran away from school to enlist, and mother was almost crazy before they found out where I was. They kept me some two weeks at the fort as a drummer boy. I was so short my drum would not clear the ground when marching, and I had got into so much mischief in that time that a sergeant took me to the port gate, took me over his knee and spanked me" with a leather belt, ana told me to beat it for home and mother, which I did. I have always thought my . father told them what to do with me. Well father whipped me and mother cried over me, and as I Lad got peppered with lice while at the fort, I was made to sleep in the barn for a week, until cleaned up. But the fife and drum were too much for me, and in July, when twelve years and a month old, 1862, 1 again ran away from home and enlisted in the Twenty-fourth Michigan infantry which was quartered on the old fair grounds in Detroit. I beat the drum and played the devil for ten days, when I was again taken to the guard line and invited to skip. With the invitation in-vitation went some kicks and cuffs I have not forgotten for-gotten yet. But the boys were not to blame for the rough treatment they gave me as my father had quietly put them up to it, trying to make me tired of soldiering. My brothers and sisters thought I was a hero, father thought I was a devil, but mother thought I was just her own little Billy just the same.- But go to school I would not! There was too much attraction on the street, so in Ocober, 1862, my mother packed a little trunk of clothing, and they started me for the Lansing Agricultural college Well things began to happen then. I arrived at the school in the afternoon of Saturday, October 9, and was to have been examined and put into my classes Monday morning. 1 might say this was the extent of my college education, and the last of my schooling. Sunday morning Mr. Tibbets, who kept the boarding house for the school, and his wife, left for the day to make a visit. Milton Ward of Detroit, De-troit, who was at the school at the time, and myself my-self were -noon companions, having been acquainted acquaint-ed in Detroit. Sunday morning, MUton and I hooked away, and went up to Lansing, as I remember it, a couple of miles away. Milt always had money, and was four or five years older than I. He got a big bag of candy and a bottle of wine. We went out to the school for a lark. After dinner Milt and I and another boy and three or four little girls who were visiting boys at the school, got together in a f w u big room upstairs, and what a time we did have! Mr. Tibbits and his wife came home and found the lot of us all as!- ?p; some on the floor, some on the bed, but all of us tipsy and sick from the wine. Was there anything doins then? I should say yes! This whole lark was laid at my door. I wac locked in a room to be kept until Monday, when I was to be sent back home to my parents. I did not dare go home, as father -would certainly have tried, at least, to whip some of the meanness out of me, for I had about used up his patience. So after the house had got quiet at night, I dropped out the window and hiked for Lansing. They were then recruiting for the Sixth Michigan cavalry. I told the recruiting officer I had no mother or father, that 1 sold papers and did odd jobs for a living, and swore I was eighteen years old. Sure, he knew better, but they enlisted me regularly as a bugler, and assigned me to Company G, Sixth Michigan cavalry. I was twelve years, three months and twenty-three days old, and was in my third enlistment, but this was the first time I was mustered in. Alf Madden enlisted with me. . I was sent to Grand Rapids where the regiment was camped while being recruited to its full strength. We were mustered into the service there. The life that we led the officers of Company G was anything but pleasant. In Washington, we camped for a time on Meri-den Meri-den hill from which place we made our first hike. And we tasted war, when we went to Falmouth and skirmished with Moseby's guerrillas. We had the opportunity of trading coffee for tobacco with the Confederate pickets. A white handkerchief on the end of a saber was the signal to stop shooting while the trade was being made between the "Rebs" on the Fredericksburg side of the Rappahannock Rap-pahannock river and us "Yanks" on the Falmouth side. I must say I never knew of any advantage being taken to shoot a fellow while the trade was being made. In the early spring of 1863, no regiment regi-ment was kept more busy than the Sixth Michigan looking out for Moseby and his men. We always had them, but never got them to any great extent. ex-tent. Moseby was a wonder. From then to the time I was taken prisoner we were in eighteen battles and minor engagements engage-ments between June 30 to October 11, 1863. The Little Bugler never lost a day, but did lose lots of meals In that time. On October 11, 1863, at Brandy station, my horse was shot from under me, and I was taken prisoner. pris-oner. Our regiment was charging through a regiment regi-ment of enemy cavalry that had got in between the main column and the rear guard, when my horse was struck by a piece of shell between the knee and hoof, throwing me heels over appetite some feet over his head. I was cut and bruised by the feet of the charging troopers, who were behind. be-hind. When I finally got up it was to look into the barrel of what appeared to me to be a cannon, but in fact was only a .43 Colt, and a fellow in a gray suit was telling me to strip! He took my shoes and pants, and darn him. he could not wear either of them; he was so much larger than I. I was taken with a trainload of other prisoners to Richmond, Va., but on the way had traded off my blouse for something to eat. We were divided up in bunches after arriving at Richmond. Destiny sent me to old Libby prison, and later to Belle Isle. I had no pants, shoes or hat. One of the older men had given me an old coat. The guard would Issue us a few sticks of wood in the evening. We burned our fires as long as possible, and when the fires had burned out to coals we scattered the coals over the ground to warm it, and then would I lay down on the end of the line one cold mgnt when soon a poor fellow came and snuggled up to me. Along in the early morning when he should have turned to warm my back, he did not move. I got up on my elbow and pulled his nose. He was dead. It was the most frightful experience I ever had. Our dead were usually relieved of any good clothing they may have had on to be used by those who were almost naked. I had still on what was left of a shirt and pair of drawers that I had worn for almost a year. Can you realize or imagine im-agine how little of either were left? I went down to the dead line one morning and saw a body on which was a fine shirt of blue cashmere cloth. I went to the gate and asked the officer of the Confederate Con-federate guard, an old man, if I might remove the shirt from that body to wear myself. "My poor boy," he said, and gave permission; with tears running down his wrinkled cheeks, to take the shirt. A red-whiskered, spindle-shanked, low-down fellow from Wisconsin that I was chumming with, and whom I had kept alive by stealing grub for him to eat, stole that shirt from me. I lost a silver mine in Colorado years ago that sold afterwards for three hundred thousand dollars, but it did not hurt so badly as the loss of that shirt. Shortly after this, there was a parole of sick and disabled men agreed on by the governments. I got out and walked aboard our transport at Savannah, Sa-vannah, the raggedest-looking kid that ever left that city. What few troops there were in that transport just stood and cried when they saw our boys. This was the nineteenth of November, 1864. At Annapolis I got my back pay, ration money and clothing money for the time I had been prisoner, pris-oner, amounting to some $300, with a furlough for thirty days. I started for Detroit. I can't tell you all that happened on the trip, but I got hom& broke after a week or ten days on the road. Father killed the fatted calf, mother had It cooked, and I was made much of by everybody, for I had been reported dead long ago, and they had preached a memorial sermon for me, telling what a good little boy I had been. I came home and spoiled it all. After a few days at home I went to dismounted camp at Harper's Ferry and from the camp was returned to my regiment, then in Washington waiting to take part in the grand review, after which we were sent to Fort Leavenworth. Here I was discharged and the regiment sent out on the plains after Indians. I went to Denver in the fall of 1865 with a mule train, before there was a railroad in the mountains. moun-tains. I returned to Topeka, Kan., with bull trains, enlisting in the regular army, went to California Cali-fornia by way of the isthmus, guarded surveyors in Arizona from the Indians, and fought Indians in Arizona with the First United States cavalry. I made a trip into Mexico with a load of phoney jewelry. Later I was arrested as a filibuster spy in Guaymas and was shipwrecked on my trip from Guaymas to Mazatlan. Two out of seven, were saved after floating around for thirty-six hours. I was shanghaied in San Francisco and taken around Cape Horn to Dublin, which was the most adventurous five months of my life. I came back to my home in 1873, married in 1874 and settled down to be decent. 1 am now a member of the Michigan Soldiers' home. Uncle Sam is trying his best to make me comfortable in my declining years. But neither he nor all the powers that be can make up the ten years worse than lost from my twelfth to twenty-second year, for what I did not learn that was rough in that time 1 have not learned since and it is not in the books. |