The Colonel’s Bloody Saber

It was April 1862—

The conditions of weather were unfavorable in Tennessee, marching was a miserable business, and the damp cold seeped into the very bones of the fighting men.

The cannon fire of artillery batteries boomed and did well to replace the sound of distant thunder that might have been there. Many of the troops on both the Union and Confederate sides quivered, their hearts beating fast. To them it wasn’t the cold that seeped into their bones, but the failings of humanity – fear and despair.

It was in the fierce fighting of the day that a nameless colonel of the Union army advanced upon the enemy. The troops under his command were soon locked in a dubious melee, their bayonets shredding through grey uniforms. The cries, smoke, and scent of sulfur on the air were enough to drive any man mad. Sanity was maintained in margin, however, on account of the brave and nameless colonel, whose very appearance was as an angel of death.

Having shed his Colt revolver, ammunition exhausted, he now had his saber drawn. The curved blade cut through the smoke in the air like the tail of a dragon. Blood dampened the grass about it, and it was here upon the mound of grey-clad bodies that the screams were least present, for death by that saber came as little shock to the foolhardy Johnny Reb who challenged it.

Far and away, a small squad of sharpshooters took notice of the nameless colonel and set their sights upon him. With the explosion of cap and the ignition of powder, the sharps fired their bullets, but by a stroke of luck, or perhaps fate, the smoke in the air made the shots near impossible to land true. The rebel sharpshooters grew frustrated, for the pride of a Confederate sharpshooter is well earned and painfully broken.

The nameless colonel soon found his enemies thinning, and the hunger of his saber was for a time sated. The melee had become so sustained that musket fire drew sparse, and the wind carried the smoke away, and the Confederate sharpshooters were inspired once again to kill the colonel.

The first shot was fired, and tore through the colonel’s cap, yet he was not killed. A second shot rang out, and a bullet met his leg, and blood spilled forth, yet he did not stumble or fall. Two more bullets were true, lodging themselves in the colonel’s arm and hand… yet he stood tall. The Confederates began to then try and explain that which they saw.

“Surely he is an angel of death!” they exclaimed, and many threw their rifles down and fled.

And so it was on that fateful day that the battle was won by the Union forces, and the Confederates were forced to retreat. When the routing was complete, many of the colonel’s men sought him out on that grey mountain, and they searched for hours, but the colonel was nowhere to be seen.

The men grew disheartened, for the loss of that great fire that spurred them on, they feared, would be the loss of courage and valor in later battles to come. But then it came to be after sunset and nightfall, like a star among a sea of shadows there glittered a light, and as they ventured towards it, they discovered the colonel’s saber beside a regimental flag. The men searched in vain for the colonel all the night, and by morning concluded that he was nowhere to be found. They were certain that he had not run, for where weaker men may give way to fear, the nameless colonel stood tall and proud. They were quite content, then, to leave the mystery be, but the saber they would not, and so a nameless lieutenant took up the saber and laid his own at rest upon the field of battle, in honor of that nameless colonel – that fire of the Union, and the hope of its preservation.