Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1894-09-18
"HERE" ANSWERED Owe
But tho Ninety and Nine Gould no, R.uIy

But tho Ninety and Nine Could not RspIy.
Yesterday an elderly veteran approached
JOURNAL reporter and from the archives
OF an old pocketbook took q ime-stained
clipping from q newspaper. "There," be
said, lis an article that M. Quad once
wrote for the New York World and
have friend who recalls the
incident and would like to see it in the
JOURNAL. I've no doubt hundreds of the
boys would read it with pleasure"
The article is as follows:
just an even hundred men answered
Here !" as the sergeant called the roll on
the morning we awoke beside the Potomac.
Ihere were young men, middle-aged men,
men from the town and men from the
farm. Men who 60 to war to fight and die
beside each other form strong attachments,
companies and regiments resolve them
selves into communities which do not look
with favor upou intruders. There was an
even hundred a. we marched away-as We
look our nrst turn at picket-as we first
slgnted the enemy-as we went into battle
Tor the first time. After the roar of the
guns had died away, and the dead had been
buried only SO men answered Here :" to
the sergeant's morning roll call. The 9TH
ers were covered up in the long trenches,
and their loss drew the living closer togeth-
er, writes M. Quad 10 the New York World.
A few weeks went by, and we stood
| shoulder to shoulder in battle line again.
There were charge and countercharge-men
screamed out as they were wounded-men
fell dead and uttered no cry. In the
gloomy forest, by the light of a camp fire,
the sergeant called the roll, and now only IS
men answered "Here!'' The red earth
trenches had claimed more victims, and the
ties between the living were drawn still
closer. When man has braved death with
you that excuses q hundred shortcomings in
camp or on the march.
Then came Cold Harbor and the falling
back to Malvern Hill. Cannon doomed
and musketry cracked all day long and far
into the night. Wounded men cursed and
groaned as they limped away or fell help
less-men pitched forward with but single
cry and died with their faces hidden in the
weeds and grass. After Malvern Hill the
sergeant called the roll again--not the same
sergeant as before, but another had taken
bis place-he was lying dead in the thickets
at Fair Oaks-and this time only 50 men
answered "Here!"
And so could you wonder that when re-
cruits came down to us we looked upon
them as intruders, even though they were
good men and true, and had come to help
US win victories? What did they know of
our dead, of our wearisome marches, of
touching elbows with us as we waited for
the word to charge the flaming guns? Their
names were called with ours, and we heard
them answer Here" But they were only
with us; they could not be of US. They
had come too late.
And after South Mountain and Antietam
and Second Manassas and Fredericksburg
and Charlottesville and Gettysburg and
the Wilderness, the roll was called, and
our dead were covered up, and other men
were sent down to take their places. We
shook hands with them and pretended to
be comrades, but we had no ties with them.
They had not learned war with us. They
could not 60 back to the beginnipg-to our
first dead. And at last came Appomattox
and the surrender, and then peace and the
return to Washington. We were almost a
full company again as we turned out on the
meadows of Arlington for the last roll call.
Upward of 70 living men could have
answered "Here!" to their names.
Fall in, company G. Attention to roll
call -
1t was not the sergeant who had called the
roll after Fredericksburg, after Chancellors-
vile, after Gettysburg, after the awful
Qrapple in the thickets and swamps of the
Wilderness. 1t was a new man-one who
had been promoted before his cheeks had
scarcely been burned by the Southern sun.
But he had heard of the ties which bound
the old veterans together-he realized what
this last roll call meant to the survivors.
And from the musty archives of the past he
took the roll of the dead and called:
"Anson - Armstrong Armitage- Ais
dorf!"
No one replied
"Berry-Bloomingda e-Benson-Bars-
tow-Benham
No one replied!
OBSERVATION-DISCLOSURES
Comstock /"
No one replied
And so he called, and 90 the silence of the
death roll grew deeper and deeper, until the
living felt chill creep over them.
Yeomanf-Ysger!
No one replied
"York!"
"Here."
And so he of all was the sole survivor
the last living manlof Company G---the only
one who had the right to stand there in that
line and answer to the last roll call. The
others---ninety and nine--were cripples at
home or sleeping their last sleep on the hill
sides, in the valleys, in the forests and the
lthickets of Virginia.
The line cheered him as he stood apart
l.. H.,