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Show The Wounded Flags. The wounded Hags! They bear them Aloft to-day In pride The living ones, who share them Alike with those who died. The flags that faintly flutter In cadence with the drum. As though they sought to utter Their joy that peace has come. The wounded flags! We hold them Far dearer than the rest: Close to our hearts we fold them The Mass by tatters blest; The flags with shotholes gaping. That tell their tale of strife, To-day are gently draping The ones who cling to life. The wounded flags! How proudly They fluttered in the days When drums were ; thrumming loudly And fifes sang warring lays! How brave was all their glowing Where , fitrce the war-guns spoke! 'J heir stars forever showing. , A beacon through the smoke! The wounded flags! We hail them. And revel In each hue, Though age and time may pale them. And red blond inio blue. Though all grow r'aik and duiler. Yet in their every part ' We see the living color : ' That thrills the nation's heart! -W. D. Nesbit In Baltimore American. Thoughts on Going Into Battle. A I.os Angeles subscriber contributes contrib-utes the following: Some old "war horses" got together in the lobby of one of Los Angeles' hotels a few . evenings ago and exchanged ex-changed experiences and spun yarns of the war of the rebellion. Among other things they discussed their sensations sen-sations on the occasion of their first battle. Said one: "As we were going into action, and I saw across the fields great columns of gray aivancing to meet us, I kept wondering if over there in those ranks from the Union army. We had several sev-eral in our regiment that were not apprehended ap-prehended during the war, and I have never met or heard of one of them since the close of the war. I have heard of one man who left our regiment regi-ment and enlisted in another, and of another who mysleriously disappeared, disap-peared, but of downright deserters, not one. "Not including drafted men who failed to ic-port and not including the men who left .the ranks after Lee's surrender, there were 112,000 deserters desert-ers from the Unicn army, and Gen. Preston reported fully as many in 1SC4 from the Confederate army. Inducements In-ducements weie offered to deserters from the opposing army on both sides, and the Confederate government was unripr pledge at one time to return Union deserters thrcugh their lines on oromise that they would remain at home du?ir.g the war. But I never met a man, or heard of one, who had returned to his home in that way. Hundreds of men who had seen service in the Confederate regiments came to our lines in Kentucky and East Tennessee, and many of them entered eagerly into Union regiments. A few Union soldiers taken prisoners probably enlisted in Confederate regiments, regi-ments, but the. mass of deserters from the Union army were not that kind of men. They left the Union service because be-cause of their dislike for discipline or for military duty, and so far as their comrades were concerned or their friends at home, they dropped out of life. Now, what became of them? Where did those hundred thousand deserters de-serters go? What sort of a life did they live afterward?" Chicago Inter Ocean. some 'Johnnie' had in his gun the bullet bul-let meant for me." Said the second man: "A little ahead of men was our color bearer, and as we marched on the enemy I kept my eyes fastened on the flag, and I thought to myself, 'If I die, it will be for the dear old Stars and Stripes.' " The third man spoke: "Our regiment regi-ment was mostly made up of city chaps, and, take us as a whole, we were a pretty good-for-nothing lot. We had been attracted to the service by a love of adventure and in a measure tempted by liberal bounties. As a rulerrJjvjK, up to the time of our enlistment, has been spent in idleness or worse. In our account of the world the credit side was mostly blank. Later in the war we were patriotic enough, and many of us would have stayed on indefinitely in the service for pure love of country and hatred of her enemies, but at the time of our first battle we had little of that spirit in our regiment. Our captain pretty thoroughly understood the situation, and before we started in for the fight he made a little address for the purpose pur-pose of awakening enthusiasm on our part and reassuring us as much as possible. He closed his address by telling us to be brave. 'Don't be afraid, boys,' he said. 'Remember that for every man hit his weight in lead has been fired at him.' Then he gave the order to move on the enemy. We had to advance across an open field, under the guns of the enemy, and I remember thinking, as the boys began dropping pretty tolerably fast about Remembered the Dog. Pension Commissioner Ware was sitting in his office at Washington one day when a brigadier general of the regular army was ushered in. "This Mr. Ware?.' he asked. "I'm that same," replied Ware. "What can I do for you?" "I don't suppose you remember me, do you?" was the reply. "Well, I don't know that I do," said Ware, taking a side look at the man again, and then, under sudden, inspiration, inspir-ation, but with a slow drawl, "but I would like to know what the devil you've done with that dog?" The stranger was astonished, but laughed heartily, and the two had a long chat. It seems that during the civil war the two had been slightly acquainted, the stranger being a member mem-ber of the First Iowa. He was known as a reckless fellow, wholly superior to the little niceties of toilet and bath. He owner a bull dog named Major Ma-jor that was the pet of the company. After a meal the soldier would toss his plate aside and call Major to wash the dishes. And Major would lick the platter clean. And it was this recruit of the days of '61 that walked into Ware's ofllce in the stiff, precise garb of the brigadier briga-dier general of the regulars. Ware did not remember him at first, but suddenly was struck by something familiar about the fellow, and, although al-though he could not remember his name, did remember the dog. Iola Register. me: 'What an expensive way to get rid of a lot of cheap cusses like us.' That's all I thought of till about two weeks later, when I woke up to hear the hospital surgeon say: 'Guess this fellow's going to make a fetch of it, after all.' " Monuments at Mission Ridge. The commission to erect a monument monu-ment to Ohio soldiers at Mission Ridge has three sites in view, any of which are within the limits of the glory achieved by the Buckeye boys in that battle. The first is just south of Bragg's headquarters, or south of the center of the right and left flanks of the assaulting as-saulting columns. The second site is 500 feet oouth of Bird's "Springs road, where Hazen's brigade assaulted the Confederate lines. The brigade was composed of the First, Sixth. Ninth, Ninety-third and One Hundred and Twenty-fourth Ohio regiments and assaulted as-saulted Slocum's Louisiana battery at that point. The fortification occupied by the battery and the earthworks used by the Confederate infantry are still in good preservation, and the national commission has promised, if the monument mon-ument is located there, to restore the works to their original condition and to place the battery in position. The third site is south of De ling's point, where Turchin's brigade is said to have charged. The second mentioned men-tioned site is said to have the preference prefer-ence of the commission, although no official action has been taken. Deserters from the Army. "I have often wondered." said the "olonel, "what became of the deserters Last of the Merrirr.ac Crew. In a village of barely fifty people, down In Beaufort county, says the Raleigh (N. C.) Observer, lives William Wil-liam R. Tetterton, the last survivor of the crew of the famous Confederate states warship Merrimac, formerly the old Virginia. He is sixty-seven years old, and is in many -ways the same old unreconstructed rebel that he was in the days frcm '61 to '65. In Richmond. Lieut. Woods had a recruiting re-cruiting station, and he was signing men for service on the Merrimac. The idea of a naval life appealed to young Tetterton. and he enlisted for service. ser-vice. The war vessel had not as yet been out on any expeditions, and the new recruit found himself one of the first among a rather scanty crew. He served on the boat from the first day-she day-she went into service until the order came from the secretary of the Confederate Con-federate states navy to put her out cf commission. He Shot Gen. Reynolds. Leander T. Hensel of Quarryvill Penn., while on a recent visit to North Carolina, met Benjamin C. Thorpe, a Confederate veteran, who says he is the sharpshooter who killed Gen. John F. Reynolds, the hero of Gettysburg. Thorpe was a member of the Fifty-fifth Fifty-fifth North Carolina regiment. On the first day of the fight the Confederate Confeder-ate sharpshooters were stationed near Cashtown. "I was on a cherry tree when the general was pointed out to me,"-said Thorpe, "and after fixing my sight at 800 yards I fired. I saw him fall into the arms of a companion. That evening I was told I had killed Reynolds." |