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| A wooden overcoat. |
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[153]
doubtful whether any of them ever executed their threatened deeds of violence.
Poor underpaid non-commissioned officers, who occupied the perplexing and uncomfortable position of go-betweens, were frequently invited by privates to strip off their chevrons and be handsomely whipped for some act annoying to said privates; but I never heard of any n. c. o. sacrificing his chevrons to any such ambitionfor various reasons, of which the fear of a thrashing was not necessarily one.
There were regiments each of which, when off duty, seemed to contain at least two or three hundred colonels and captains, so much social freedom obtained between officers and rank and file, yet at the proper time there was just one commander of such a regiment to whom the men looked ready to do his bidding, even to follow him into the jaws of death.
These officers were not always devout men; at an earlier period in their lives some of them may have learned to be profane; some drank commissary whiskey occasionally, it may be ; but in all their dealings with subordinates, while they made rigid exactions of them as soldiers, they never forgot that they were men, and hence, endeavoring to be just in the settlement of camp troubles, protecting their command in the full enjoyment of all its rights
among similar organizations, never saying “go!”
but “come!”
in the hour of danger, they welded their regiment into a military engine as
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