Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 November 1892 — Soldiers’ Feelings in Battle. [ARTICLE]

Soldiers’ Feelings in Battle.

Testimony differs as to the feeling of the soldier going- into a fight, and the many experiences related during the recent encampment by the Grand Army men to their always willing listeners showed that in their war histories there was no uniformity of either fear or daring. The Major of a New Hampshire regiment said: “I always felt timid when the shot began to reach us, but as soon as we got into action I was carried away by excitement. lam not usually a profane man, and I have no recollection of talking roughly to my troops, yet a good many of them have assured me that all through a fight I would swear like —well, like a trooper.” Auotherman, a Colonel, said: “It’s all nonsense to say that a man doesn’t feel afraid at the beginning of a fight and all through it. Of course he does. He has reason. Sherman said ol General Sumner that he was the only man who grew bolder as ho grew older, but the only man I ever saw who really seemed to want to fight, and to enjoy it after he was in it, was Custer.”