Fine gunner and fighter.
I saw but little of
Beers after this.
Just when he joined the Army I cannot say, but I know that it must have been some time before the battles around
Richmond in the early summer of 1862; for, on the battlefield of
Malvern Hill, I met some of the men of the Letcher Artillery—
Greenlee Davidson's company, to which he belonged—who told me that my ‘Yankee’ was the finest gunner in the battery and fought like a Turk.
Between
Malvern Hill and
Chancellorsville I saw
Beers perhaps two or three times—I think once in
Richmond, shortly after his wife and children and my mother and sisters arrived from the
North.
I have seldom seen a better looking soldier.
He was about five feet eleven inches in height, had fine shoulders, chest and limbs, a handsome, manly figure, carried his head high, had clustering brown hair, a steel grey eye and a splendid sweeping mustache.
Every now and then I heard, from some man or officer of his battery, or of
Pegram's Battalion, some special commendation of his gallantry in action; but, he being in the Third Corps and I in the First, we seldom met. I am confident
Tom Brander, John and
Jim Tyler,
Ferriter, and other battle-scarred veterans of
Pegram's Battalion, stand ready to vouch for
Beers as the equal of any soldier in the command, and some of them tenderly recall him as a good and true soldier and follower of
Jesus Christ as well as of
Robert Lee. I am told he was in the habit of holding religious services with the men of his battery on every fitting occasion—services which they highly appreciated.
Just after the
battle of Chancellorsville I was in
Richmond, for what purpose I cannot now recall, unless it was that I had recently received an appointment in ‘engineer troops,’ and visited the city in connection with my commission and orders.
I am unable to recall the details, but I was notified to meet poor
Beers's body at the train.
General Lindsay Walker, learning that he had been killed on the 3rd of May, and buried upon the field, had the body exhumed and sent to me at
Richmond.
It is strange how everything connected
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with the matter, except the sad scene at the grave, seems to have faded out of my recollection.
I know he was buried in our family lot in
Hollywood, and, as no one of us was buried there for long years after this, we must have bought the lot for the purpose.
Yes; I remember, too, that we laid him to rest with military honors,
Captain Gay's company, the ‘Penitentiary Guard,’ acting as escort, and I must have ridden in the carriage with the stricken widow and his two little girls, for, I distinctly recall standing between the children at the side of the open grave, and holding a hand of each, as the body of their hero-father was lowered to its last resting place.
I remember, too, that not a muscle of their pale, sweet faces quivered, as the three volleys were fired over the low mound that covered him. They were the daughters of a soldier.
