Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 35, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 December 1902 — They Fought to Kill Those Days. [ARTICLE]

They Fought to Kill Those Days.

J ust 40 years ago now a wellknown townsman of ours was nursing an exceeding sore head; not the kind of- a sore-head the disappointed politician is troubled with, but the real article, in the strictest literal meaning of the word. The person in question was John Kresler. and the cause of his sore bead was a good-sized chunk of Confederate lead. John was at that time a member of the 129th Pennsylvania infantry, and it was just at the close of the three days’ disastrous attack on the Confederate works at Fredericks* burg, that John got his wound. Last Thursday, Friday and Saturday, Dec. 11th, 12th, and 13tb, were the 40th anniversary of that battle, and those dates came that year on the same days of week as this. ■ Those were the times when fighting in the army was a very dangerous amusement. In John’s company, for instance, 60 men went into the battle, and of these 9 were killed on the field and 27 wounded, or 36 in all, or just 60 per cent, of the company stopped rebel bullets. Of the other members of the company, every roan had bullet holes in his clothes. Of 4000 men in his division 1768 were killed or pounded in that one battle also. It was on the close of the last day’s fight, when returning from their last unsuccessful charge on the enemy’s position, that John got bis dose. He was in company with a lieutenant, who at roll-call reported Kresler as killed. When it got dark, however the lieutenant and several went out and found John, able to vociferate but not to navigate, but worth a whole squad of dead men. But if the comrades bad not found him be would have frozen to death, before morning, for it was a bitterly cold night. His wound was in the top of bis head, and John says if the pattern he was sawed off by had been an inch longer, at either end, that bullet would have stopped his clock for sure.