Page:War; or, What happens when one loves one's enemy, John Luther Long, 1913.djvu/332

WAR least, more like it than anything I had seen up to that time. They were, mostly, youngsters with savage apple-cheek faces, thinking it all a grand picnic. And yet, God help us, I have seen some of those apple-cheeked boys come home with long whiskers and hair, pale and thin, on three legs, two of them wooden. And some I have seen come home to the Dead March. Some haven't come yet!

There is a poor old widow down the road here, whose only son, just cut from her apron string, stood beside me that Sunday morning at Chancellorsville, looking and behaving like a play soldier—just a red-cheeked, tow-headed chap, so high! She had told me to watch out for him and bring him back to her, that he was all she had to offer to Father Abraham. He was captain by then—for gallantry. Not in zouave uniform, but a faded one that might be any color. Well, the artillery opened and we were ordered forward. He went in at the head of his men, his little blue cap on the point of his sword, yelling like a young demon. The 316