A Grisly Souvenir

Since I am back to work on my rotating schedule, this post comes courtesy of Phantom Captain, and I must say, this is amazing....

Sept. 17, 1862. 9 – 9:30 a.m.
Near Dunker Church, Sharpsburg, Maryland.
Kershaw’s Brigade steps out of the West Woods to assault Federal positions just east and south of the church.

Sergeant Greenland (C Co., 125th PA) handed the colors to Captain Wallace, his captain, who stuck them in a tree stump behind Woodruff’s guns as the Confederates concentrated their weapons upon him. Kershaw’s survivors were amazed to see the officer standing, much less unhurt, following a volley of at least one hundred rifles at the regimental colors. Captains McKeage (G Co.) and Wallace hurriedly rallied their men and ordered them prone behind the battery before they started to return fire.
Tyndale’s Ohioans, to the rear of Monroe, prepared for the onslaught. A projectile exploded in the center of the 5th Ohio’s color guard. The men quickly raised the standards as the brigade instinctively rose to its feet along the crest and fixed bayonets. Tyndale’s line took aim as the South Carolinians neared the guns. At twenty five yards, they fired. Kershaw’s Brigade staggered, held for a few moments, then slowly retired to the West Woods, where joined by Ransom’s Brigade, they advanced a second time.
At that moment, Brigadier General George Greene (Tyndale’s Division commander) raced onto the field with Captain John A. Tompkins’ Battery (A, 1st Rhode Island). The Ohioans cheered as Greene rushed the battery through the left of the line and posted the pieces to meet Kershaw’s assault. The general rose in the stirrups and raised his hat to them.
Kershaw’s people started to close again on the Mumma farm. The brave Confederates charged across the Hagerstown Pike right into the muzzles of the two batteries and another wall of flaming lead sent them reeling back into the West Woods. As the smoke cleared and that sector of the battlefield quieted, the Federal soldiers stared in horror across the open ground to their front. The Confederate dead, mostly men from the 3rd and 7th South Carolina regiments, lay in windrows in front of Monroe’s and Tompkin’s smoking guns. The colors of the 7th South Carolina, having been shot from their staff, were draped across the still warm corpse of the last member of the color guard. Kershaw sacrificed over half of his men in the attack.
Wounded men writhed upon the ground. Private Tresse (B Co. 125th PA) waited until the last Confederate trampled over him before he picked himself up from among the dead and casually ambled back to his regiment. Private Fred Gerhard (D Co.) scrounged over the corpses behind the battery looking for a new weapon. He “swapped” his piece for a nicer one. While he was at it he “appropriated” a leather case, containing a knife, fork and spoon, from a dead Reb, whose eating days were over. He heard a wounded Rebel call out to him. Gerhard asked him what he wanted. The man asked to be put in the shade. Gerhard helped him to his feet and tried to carry the man off. When he discovered, however, that the Reb could not walk because he was partially disemboweled, he laid him back down. He saw no use in dragging a dying man to safety. Many other soldiers spent the lull in the fighting collecting souvenirs.
One of Tompkins’ sergeants shaved the fried brains of a dead Confederate from the muzzle of Thomas M. Aldrich’s cannon and kept them for a memento. Aldrich, who was unable to leave his gun, dejectedly watched Corporal Jacob Orth (D Co.) whose regiment, the 28th Pennsylvania (with the 111th Pennsylvania) had defended Tompkins’ right section from Kershaw’s attack, unwrap the standard of the 7th South Carolina from the corpse of the last bearer. Aldrich’s action won him the Medal of Honor four years later.

Taken from, “Antietam, The Soldiers’ Battle” by John Michael Priest. Oxford University Press, 1989.

Thanks for the submission! Oh, and I wander if the sergeant later picked up some fava beans and a nice Chianti...