The Veteran
By KATIIMCIXI-: HOSKINS
John Thomas Rhodes was IS when
he enlisted in the Confederate army and
went off to Camp Mangum as color-
bearer for the Guilford Grays. Tall,
broad and handsome, he marched and
fought in the Seven Days Battle, at
Harper's Ferry, at Sharpsburg and
Fredericksburg, at Gettysburg and
Bristow Station, at Malvern Hill and at
Spotsylvania, where he received minor
wounds, his only ones in the war.
Subsisting largely on patriotism and
branch water, he marched with the long
thin gray line to Gettysburg and
charged, pistol in one hand and flag in
the other, across the fields and up the
slope to face the raging fire of the
Union line. His brain was etched for¬
ever with the spurt of blood from a
saber cut across the face of a wounded
comrade, the sudden choking cry of a
boy struck with a minie ball, the colli¬
sion of Major Charles Stedman and
Colonel James T. Morchead and their
simultaneous shouts — "Arc you all
right Stedman?" — and — "How are you
making it. Morchead?" — as they re¬
covered balance and charged on, and
up — then back, with John Thomas and
his colors drooping and bloodstained
and dusty.
Back, and back, he and his colors
went across the battlefields of Virginia.
Patriotism remained high, but some¬
times even the branch water was pol¬
luted with the remains of a long-dead
horse, and the air was often heavy with
the sickly sweet odor of the unburied
dead. Back — back — and back he
trudged with the others, slow and stub-
ЕП,
to re-unite finally with Lee's army
Amelia Courthouse, fighting by day
I marching by night, with but a pint
of parched corn the last nine days. A
Yankee called across the lines of his
last picket duty to offer meat. John
rhomas weakly but spiritedly declined
™ the grounds that he had a haversack
ull. "Well, grease yourself with it and
kcct back into the Union," yelled his
jpponent in blue.
Of 179 of the Guilford Grays, 1st
gt. John Thomas Rhodes was one
of 7 to stack arms at Appomattox.
Through unashamed tears he watched
General Lee mount Traveller after con¬
cluding the terms of surrender and ride
with bowed head through the lines
of his ragged, discouraged troops - -
through the Union lines — both silent.
With the greatest sadness he was ever to
know, he tramped next day down the
crowded roadway past the tavern, past
the courthouse, past the village, a mile
away to listen in silence to the farewell
of his majestic leader, sitting on his gray
horse in the shadow of the poplar tree,
bidding his soldiers go home, take up
life anew, and be faithful to the Union.
At 22. John Thomas Rhodes came
home to carry out Lee's last commands.
He returned to continue existence in a
land drained of youth and vigor; to a
world whose changed concept was be¬
yond his comprehension. He drifted
into marriage, into fatherhood, into and
out of business ventures, and was un¬
failingly loyal to the Union against
which he had fought; but for the ensu¬
ing fifty years, above the flag of the
Union floated in his mind's eye the flag
of the Confederacy and the standard of
the Guilford Grays.
In his cars were echoes of bugle calls
at dawn, the whispering shuffle of the
bare, tired feet of long lines of weary
men marching with empty stomachs.
but with head held high; the shrill,
piercing yell of the battle charge; the
clash of arms, and the agonized gasp of
sudden death. For fifty years. John
Thomas walked looking backward, and
when the old veteran passed over the
river he went to fall in behind a stately
figure mounted on a great gray horse,
who would lead him up the final slope
and through the gate into the Promised
Land.
'HE STATE. March 16. 1963
A, lllut'rotion fro* "Chi<kamou9o : Bloody Baltic of Ike W**»~ by GU«n Tinker.
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