Sword and Awl

DURING the late war an unkempt and illiterate Norwegian, who in some inexplicable way had acquired an Irish accent in learning the English language, succeeded by false representations in recruiting from the hospitals of the State of M—a number of the abler-bodied and feebler-minded patients. These he equipped with uniforms and utensils. How he made the requisitions, or who approved them, no one ever knew. It was early in the rebellion, and before the kindly volunteer quartermaster had been chilled by contact with the second auditor of the treasury.

De V—(he had a French name to adorn his Scandinavian origin and cast a romantic spell about his accent), having enlisted his invalids without authority, and holding no higher commission than a lieutenant’s uniform of that amorphous grace which only the deft fingers of lovely woman can communicate to male garments, now procured transportation for his detachment, with the same mysterious facility that had attended his other operations, and soon reached Louisville. There he reported to General Buell.

The mode of dealing with a self-appointed officer in command of anatomical subjects not having been prescribed in the course of study at West Point, that distinguished soldier was at a loss how to dispose of our hero, — being, indeed, as much amazed at his appearance as Cadmus may have been at the crop springing from his eccentric husbandry. Happily, the chief of artillery came to the rescue with the suggestion that the military estrays should be assigned to temporary duty with a certain regular battery, then somewhat deficient in numbers. This advice was eagerly adopted by the bewildered Buell, and the emaciated cohorts, with their very irregular officer, were ordered to report accordingly. The officers of the battery learned with some astonishment that their little band of veterans, whose youngest noncommissioned officer wore three service stripes, was to be reinforced by Lieutenant De V—and his dubious detachment, and waited with interest the coming of those Falstaffian allies.

When at last they arrived there was something sadly ludicrous in the appearance of the shambling creatures; and there was something revolting as well as ludicrous in the bearing of their coarsejawed and carroty-haired leader, to whom they served but as shadows of the names on the muster-roll that should bring him his commission and his pay.

The officers refused to admit De V—— to their mess, and failing other companionship he was driven to the cheerful society of his deluded followers, who had already begun to entertain for him the most violent dislike of which their parting souls were capable. Many of the unhappy wretches pined away amid the cold and wet, and De V—— watched with anxious solicitude the gradual melting of his forlorn hope; he feared the governor would not issue his commission, and he knew the mustering officer would not swear him in on a roll of dead men, — no superintendents of national cemeteries having at that time been created. Fortunately for De V——, the survival of a few of the unfittest gave him still a frail tenure upon the hesitating paymaster, who much dreaded the disallowance of his vouchers in the case of this nondescript lieutenant; and the arrival of a half dozen or more fresh consumptives placed him upon a sufficient warfooting to secure the coveted muster.

A few weeks after this event, Lieutenant De V——heard, as he marched, the distant roar of the guns at Pittsburgh Landing, and at day-break on the morning after this ominous sound fell upon his ears the battery was in action on the left of Nelson’s division. Hardly were the guns unlimbered before a man was killed. This was a brutal shock to the sensitive De V——. A deathly pallor overspread his countenance, and like the banker in the Hunting of the Snark, of whom it is written that when he met the fabled Bandersnatch “ so great was his fright that his waistcoat turned white,” even his red whiskers seemed to lose their fire and take an ashen hue. He nevertheless affected the deepest interest in the welfare of the battery, and, judging from his own sensations that retreating was the serious occupation of war, rode up to the captain, whom he asked, in a palsied voice, if the men were supplied with spikes. Upon receiving a negative answer from that thoughtless officer, he urged the necessity of procuring them at once, and volunteered to perform that dangerous service.

The captain, exchanging a wink with his subordinates, gave the proper orders, and the supernumerary De V —— started immediately for the Landing. His horse, nearly as frightened as he, “ fled like a shadow,” and soon bore our hero to the desired haven; where, as rumor after reported through the cook, he secluded himself in the battery wagon, under the lid of which, carefully closed, he remained, half-suffocated, until the noise of the cannonading died away.

That the rumor was not a lying one was proven by his not rejoining the battery until the close of the action; and its credibility is further confirmed by the following incident. The childish delight which De V—, to whom wearing a sash diagonally was a rapture, took in performing the functions of officer of the day caused the frequent imposition on him of the duties of any officer of the command whose laziness craved indulgence. On one of these occasions, when De V— was enjoying his sash in the vicinity of the guard-tent, he chanced to arouse the ire of an old soldier whose chronic incarceration made his casual sober appearance in the ranks a matter of surprise. This venerable vagrant, who shared with his comrades in the general scorn for De V—, drunkard though he was, felt it humiliation to stand in the line when the guard and prisoners were turned out in honor of that officer’s visit.

A life-long respect for shoulder - straps and familiarity with the direful consequences of such an act prevented his openly insulting our hero; and yet he longed to do so. He was a man of dry humor, and it was not one of his least comical inspirations that led him on this memorable day to knock vigorously on the lid of the battery wagon, and call, in stentorian tones, Come out, lieutenant; the fight’s all over.” Nothing could have galled De V—— more; and yet he was powerless to revenge himself. The punishment of the old soldier would have been confession, and so that malicious inebriate withdrew to the guard-tent to chuckle with impunity over his victory.

Not long after the event just recounted, De V——was enabled to show that, if wanting in pluck, he was not incapable of heroic self-sacrifice. The battery was ordered on a reconnaissance. No sooner had the news reached his ears than with an air of mournful resignation he appeared before the captain, and, expressing his confident belief that all the other officers wished to go to the front, intimated that should it be necessary for an officer to remain in camp with the baggage he would not raise the standard of revolt in the event of that loathsome duty falling to him.

While the army was in that comfortless bivouac of ten days on the field of battle which succeeded Shiloh, one of the officers of the battery, suffering under an acute attack of that evanescent devoutness which is often the sequel to escape from danger, began reading the Bible aloud to his comrades. De V—— was a consummate hypocrite, and, though lying and dishonest, affected an austere piety. He was much pleased with the Bible-reading, and fancied that now he might make his counterfeit religion a sort of passport into the society of the officers. So one evening, when our biblical student had finished his reading, and was engaged in the spiritual task of mixing a cocktail for next day’s matins, De V——approached the official group, and, regardless of the coolness of his reception, signified his approval of the outburst of Christian feeling indicated by the Bible-reading. This courteous conduct had no softening effect on the officers, and, finding them inaccessible through sympathy, De V——ventured an appeal to their vanity. There were few soldiers who were not gratified to see their names in print in connection with some deed of gallantry. As De V—— had no gallantry, he conceived the print to be the principal thing. He therefore remarked that he had in contemplation writing a letter to the New York Independent, descriptive of the great spiritual awakening caused by the horrors of Shiloh. The officers did not covet renown on the ground that they had been scared out of their dissolute courses, and moreover feared that the Independent, with the undeviating inaccuracy of true journalism, would assign the Norseman to their regiment, — a mortification too heavy to be borne; and so this handsome offer of celebrity was rejected.

De V——’s gorge rose at this second rebuff, and he cast about for some means to make the iron enter the soul of one officer at least. He changed the subject of conversation, and, in the guise of a seeker after truth, with cunningly malicious humility, submitted to the captain a point in tactics. “ Captain,” said he, “ yesterday when I was out at drill with Lieutenant Gawain, I heard him give the command, ‘Limber to the rear!’ This morning I heard Lieutenant Galahad give the command, ‘ Limber to the front!’ Lieutenant Gawain, being a graduate of West Point, I suppose was right.”

“ They were both right,” said the laconic captain.

The ribald jeers that greeted his discomfiture excited in the bosom of De V—— a rage his prudence could no longer stem. His soul was in arms. The blood of his glorious ancestors, gone to drink mead in Valhalla, boiled in his veins. Not the god Thor when he smote the serpent Midgard could have been more terrible than was De V——as he hissed forth the words, “ I may not know much about tactics, but I can make a better pair of sewed boots than any officer in the regular army.” Up to this time he had modestly concealed his previous occupation; but the violence of his anger and the strength of his desire to assert some kind of superiority to his persecutors had rent the veil.

After this ebullition of temper De V——courted solitude. Zimmermann could not have been more lone. But soon there came to him a need for advice. General Nelson had offered a reward of five hundred dollars for a spy to enter Corinth, and the cupidity of De V—— had been excited thereby. His avarice seemed about to serve him as a substitute for courage. To the officers it was like a gleam of hope. A happy termination of their relations with De V—— seemed approaching. They became genial; they treated him with courtesy; they adorned him, as it were, with garlands, for the patriotic sacrifice. Not one of them withheld words of encouragement and cheer. They gave him an exoteric God speed, and an esoteric devil go with you.

They knew, to be sure, that his intelligence was too feeble for a spy’s; but what cared they for that? They caressed the beatific vision of his sudden death so soon as he should penetrate the enemy’s line. But, alas, he did not go. His courage oozed away like that of Bob Acres, — odds gibbets and halters! — and the disappointed officers were compelled to await the tardy recognition of his services by the governor of M———, who, not long after, removed from the battery, which had been supplied with recruits from the depot, the few remaining unburied corpses. They were added to a skeleton M-battery, to the captaincy of which the governor immediately promoted De V——, exhibiting therein that ready appreciation of a thoroughly worthless officer which so signally characterized the average war governor, and enabled him to avoid bestowing rewards where they were due with such unerring certainty.

De V——, soon after his promotion, managed to get ordered to the permanent garrison of Nashville, where, for the remainder of the rebellion, his military genius rusted in inglorious ease.

H. A. Huntington.