Robert Stiles, Four years under Marse Robert

[115] he had been one of the ancient prophets; but I heard some of them say they liked that old preacher mighty well, but they didn't just feel certain whether they wanted him around having prayers so close under the Yankee guns; that he “didn't seem to pay hardly enough attention to them things.”

Colonel Brandon, father of my Yale classmate of that name, who was a captain in the regiment, was lieutenantcolonel of the Twenty-first Mississippi. He was a dignified, majestic-looking officer and a rigid disciplinarian, but an old man and very stout and heavy. I do not recollect whether Colonel Humphreys was present at Malvem Hill, but Brandon certainly went in with his regiment when the brigade, as I remember, unsupported, made repeated quixotic efforts to capture the Federal guns massed on the hill. They were exposed to the fire I have already described, and of course suffered bloody repulse. Colonel Brandon had his ankle shattered while the regiment was advancing in the first charge. On the way back his men proposed to carry him with them to the rear, but he refused. He was sitting up and pluckily applying his handkerchief as a tourniquet above the wound, and he simply said: “Tell the Twentyfirst they can't get me till they take those guns!”

When the line passed him on the second charge, Brandon put his hat on his sword, held it up and waved it, cheering the regiment on, but in a few moments the bleeding remnant staggered to the rear again, and again they came for their colonel, insisting that they must carry him with them. The old soldier actually drew his revolver, declaring that he would shoot down any man who laid hands upon him, and he repeated his former message: “Tell the Twenty-first they can't get their colonel till they take those guns!”

Again the charge swept by the prostrate old man, who waved his sword and his hat, urging his men up the awful slope; but when again they returned to the rear utterly broken and shattered, the old hero had fainted and the litter bearers bore him off the field.

I saw him in Richmond a few days later. His leg had been amputated below the knee. He was doing wondrous well physically, but was full of deep dissatisfaction, mortification