Edward, when eighteen years old, went to war with his young uncle (John Parker Bagley, #75967455) in 1861, and died of sickness early in 1864, after many battles, with never a scratch except in the first one, Shiloh, where he had a slight wound that invalided him home for a few weeks. Neither his mother, nor any of family, ever saw him again in life. When the family heard he was sick, his father (James Madison Bridge) started to go to him. After many obstacles he reached the camp of his regiment, the 55th Ill. Vols., at Larkinsville, Alabama, to find that the boy had been dead over a week. His comrades exhumed the body and encased it in a proper casket. Then they, in rank violation of military orders, smuggled the father with his son's casket into an empty freight train, bound north. There the living and the dead rode, the sole occupants of the car, for some two hundred miles, in the unmitigated cold of January, to Nashville. Then home the way was easy--the boy was buried among his own. His comrades afterward told us that, as the end approached and he knew he was about to die, he asked passionately--may on the borderland of delirium--if his body would be left there to be kicked about by the "Rebs." He was calmed by their assurances that he should be buried at home. It was a promise they made in love and pity, without any serious expectation that it could ever be fulfilled--and now it was made good.
Source:
- The Marching Years By Norman Bridge (1920)
Source:
- The Marching Years By Norman Bridge (1920)
Edward, when eighteen years old, went to war with his young uncle (John Parker Bagley, #75967455) in 1861, and died of sickness early in 1864, after many battles, with never a scratch except in the first one, Shiloh, where he had a slight wound that invalided him home for a few weeks. Neither his mother, nor any of family, ever saw him again in life. When the family heard he was sick, his father (James Madison Bridge) started to go to him. After many obstacles he reached the camp of his regiment, the 55th Ill. Vols., at Larkinsville, Alabama, to find that the boy had been dead over a week. His comrades exhumed the body and encased it in a proper casket. Then they, in rank violation of military orders, smuggled the father with his son's casket into an empty freight train, bound north. There the living and the dead rode, the sole occupants of the car, for some two hundred miles, in the unmitigated cold of January, to Nashville. Then home the way was easy--the boy was buried among his own. His comrades afterward told us that, as the end approached and he knew he was about to die, he asked passionately--may on the borderland of delirium--if his body would be left there to be kicked about by the "Rebs." He was calmed by their assurances that he should be buried at home. It was a promise they made in love and pity, without any serious expectation that it could ever be fulfilled--and now it was made good.
Source:
- The Marching Years By Norman Bridge (1920)
Source:
- The Marching Years By Norman Bridge (1920)
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