John D. Billings, Hardtack and Coffee: The Unwritten Story of Army Life

This call is the Attention of infantry at which the men, already in column, take their places, officers mount, and all await the next call, which is

Forward.

At this signal the regiments take “right shoulder shift,” and the march begins. Let the reader, in imagination, take post by the roadside as the column goes by. Take a look at corps headquarters. The commander is a major-general. His staff comprises an assistant adjutant-general, an assistant inspector-general, a topographical engineer, a commissary of musters, a commissary of subsistence, a judgeadvocate, several aides-de-camp — and perhaps other officers, of varying rank. Those mentioned usually ranked from colonel to captain. In the Union army, major-generals might command either a division, a corps, or an army, but in the Confederate service each army of importance was commanded by a lieutenant-general. Take a look at the corps headquarters flag. Feb. 7, 1863, General Hooker decreed the flags of corps headquarters to be a blue swallow-tail field bearing a white Maltese cross, having in the centre the number of the corps; but, so far as I can learn, this decree was never enforced in a single instance. Mr. James Beale, in his exceedingly valuable and unique volume, “The Union flags at Gettysburg,” shows a nondescript cross on some of the headquarters flags, which some quartermaster may have intended as a compliance with Hooker's order; but though true copies of originals they are monstrosities, which never could have had existence in a well ordered brain, and which have no warrant in heraldry or general