Democratic Sentinel, Volume 22, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 December 1898 — FEAR IN BATTLE. [ARTICLE]

FEAR IN BATTLE.

The Colonel Bays No Man Went Through the War Without Experiencing It. They were talking about a soldier’s feelings in battle and some expressed the opinion that man men went through the civil war without being frightened at any time by their personal danger. It was the colonel, who had gained honors on the battlefield, Who answered him as follows: “When I started out I felt sure that I would never know what the feeling of fear was, and experience taught me that all soldiers went forth with the same impression. Gad, how I changed my mind during my first skirmish! We were behind an embankment and I waa tn command. It just rained lead across our heads. Every time a man raised his head above the breastworks It came whizzing off his shoulders as sure as shooting. I got scared. I could feel myself growing colorless. I couldn’t articulate. My arms grew rigid, and to save me I couldn’t have put in a load. All of a sudden it came to me i that the men under me know that I j was scared. This thought loosened up i my tongue and joints a bit. Then it flashed over me that it would never do for me to let my men know that I was afraid, and that I must do something to prove that I was not. What could ’ do? The man next to me poked hto head up at that point and a mlnle ball

took him right between the eyes. A cold sweat broke out on me, and I was ready to collapse, when all of a sudden It came to me that all would be lost; that I should be ruined If I let my meil go on thinking that I was a coward. I seized my field glasses and with a shout leaped to the top of the breastworks. I raised those glasses to my eyas, and for a second our enemy almost stopped tiring they were so astonished. I looked from one end of their lines to the other. “ *Come down from there, you d d Mittle fool!’ said a rough voice behind me, and I was jerked back into the ditch by a powerful ‘Do you Want to get killed?’ It was my colonel’s voice and his hand that saved me. What did I see through the field glasses ? Not a thing. I was too scared. A blind man could have seen more. But I saved my reputation. Many times after that I was frightened in battle, but never so much so, and I nev« shirked. From that day until the war closed my men adored me, and they thought I never knew fear w® during the whole es those four bloody years.” “What did they think ailed you that day?’ “It went the rounds in my company that I had an attack of heart trouble,” answered the coion el with a laugh, “and I never took the trouble to correct the story. It was true in a way, for I was so frightened that my heart almost stopped beating. It’s bosh to talk about any man going through the wlar without feeling fear. Any brave old soldier will tell you of experiences such as I have told.”