Do you suppose
I would get in front of my men to be shot in front
by the enemy and in the back by my own men?
That is no place for an officer. The place for the
officer in actual battle is behind the line. How
often, as a staff officer, I rode down the line, when
our men were suddenly called to the line of battle,
and the Rebel yells were coming out of the woods,
and shouted: ``Officers to the rear! Officers to
the rear!'' Then every officer gets behind the line
of private soldiers, and the higher the officer's
rank the farther behind he goes. Not because
he is any the less brave, but because the laws of
war require that. And yet he shouted, ``I, with
my shining sword--'' In that house there sat
the company of my soldiers who had carried that
boy across the Carolina rivers that he might not
wet his feet. Some of them had gone far out to
get a pig or a chicken. Some of them had gone
to death under the shell-swept pines in the
mountains of Tennessee, yet in the good man's speech
they were scarcely known. He did refer to them,
but only incidentally. The hero of the hour was
this boy. Did the nation owe him anything?
No, nothing then and nothing now.
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